


The Song of a Wolf and her Hound

by ASMillen



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Assassination attempts, BAMF Sansa Stark, Because Sandor Speaks in Curse Words, Canon Divergence, Choking but not the good kind, DID I MENTION THE HANDHOLDING, Did I mention angst, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Intense Handholding, Love, Mentions of Ramsay Bolton - Freeform, Mentions of past abuse, POV Sansa Stark, Politics, Protective Sandor Clegane, Queen Sansa Stark, Royal Politics, Sandor Clegane Lives, Sandor lives after Clegane Bowl, Sansa Stark is Queen in the North, Sansa Stark-centric, Slow Burn, Some Minor Canon-Typical Violence, Sworn Shields (ASoIaF), The Hound and The Little Bird, We still burning slow here, Wildlings - Freeform, Winterfell, Yup angsty, crude language, maybe a little smut, mentions of joffrey baratheon - Freeform, mentions of torture, sansan, the north - Freeform, these two will be the death of me
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-12
Updated: 2020-04-28
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:40:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 21
Words: 53,675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22232677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ASMillen/pseuds/ASMillen
Summary: After becoming the Queen in the North, Sansa Stark has to navigate the politics of ruling a kingdom while dealing with matters of the heart when a man from her past rides through her gates and offers her a vow she can't refuse.
Relationships: Past Arya Stark/Gendry Waters Mentioned, Sandor Clegane/Sansa Stark
Comments: 120
Kudos: 245





	1. Chapter One

Sansa released a long, relieved breath as she came to a stop at the top of Winterfell’s stony battlements. Little flurries of snow swirled around her, spurred on by the icy breeze sweeping across the land. She held out one of her gloved hands and let a small smile grace her lips when one of the tiny snowflakes landed on the gray fur.

A gaggle of childhood memories came unbidden to the forefront of her mind. She saw herself as a young girl, fiery red hair wild and untamed, running about the courtyard with Robb, trying to chase the wind. She remembered a time when Arya was a babe and her father had brought them both outside to catch snowflakes, though Arya couldn’t have comprehended what the little cold, wet things were.

Years later, she’d learned it wasn’t proper for a girl of her status to run around the keep like a hoodlum, but propriety was okay with her standing near her lady mother while the snow fell upon them, highlighting their hair in icy ornaments that sparkled and melted in the sunlight. Often times, those moments were ruined by Arya and Rickon throwing snowballs in Sansa’s face, which she had deemed so-called disasters, though they had become cherished tales of the past.

Disappointment flared inside her when the snowflake melted and the sound of footsteps slapping against stone stairs met her ears. She turned towards the top of the staircase as the little page boy made it to the top with a red face and his chest moving rapidly with his heavy breathing. His dark eyes widened and he hurried to bow before her when he noticed her watching him.

“Your Majesty,” the boy said quickly, the title slipping off his lips awkwardly.

“Is something the matter?” Sansa asked. 

She already knew the answer. 

There was always something that demanded her attention. She always woke up to a desk full of paperwork and complaints. The Great Hall was never short of petitioners, all telling stories about their greatest woes for her to judge. None of the messages from King’s Landing brought the best of news, especially when the words were ominously from Bran.

“A strange man rode through the gates,” the boy told her, his face pale and wane. Sansa gestured for him to continue when he started sucking his bottom lip in thought. “He’s asked for a aud-audience,” the boy stumbled, tripping over the large word, “with Your Grace.”

“I see,” Sansa responded in a light tone, though her brows twisted together in confusion at his information. “Well, tell Steward Mazin I will make my way to the Great Hall in a few moments.”

“Of course, Your Grace,” the boy replied before ducking a quick bow and scrambling back down the stairs with clumsy feet.

Sansa turned back to gaze out at the courtyard below, watching as her people went about their daily lives as happily as they knew how to be. For a moment, she wished she could be one of them. She could be a simple seamstress with no family name to bind her to something she’d never chosen, but she knew that wasn’t who she was.

Wolves couldn’t pretend to be rabbits.

With a great, reluctant sigh, she turned on her heel and made her way to the Great Hall. She had to stop more than a couple times along the way. A couple ladies stopped her to ask about her day and what she was planning to wear to the upcoming ball she’d been planning. Several servants stopped her to ask for her opinion on certain things, like what they should have for dinner that night or what napkins she wanted with the table settings.

When Sansa finally made it to the Great Hall, all the lords and ladies still living in the castle were waiting for her with impatience clearly written across their faces. A few of them had already made her aware of their dislike of a female ruler of the North. She would be lying if she said she didn’t take a small bit of satisfaction in the fact that they all bowed to her as she passed by without even an announcement of her name and titles.

As she made her way to the dais where her throne sat, proud and unyielding, she noticed a man standing in the middle of the aisle. Her heart skipped a beat with recognition as she noticed how tall he was compared to any other man in the room, save for GreatJon Umber. He was broader, too, in the shoulders and the chest.

 _By the Gods, it can’t be,_ Sansa thought to herself as she walked past the individual, catching a whiff of sweat and blood in the air. When she turned to face the crowd, sitting herself in her throne as demurely as her Septa had taught her to sit, she had to clamp her teeth down on the inside of her cheek to keep a gasp from escaping her lips.

Sandor Clegane stood tall amidst dozens of the Northern men and women. His head was held high in the air while his back seemed to be straighter than a board. He stared at her with eyes made of steel, grayer than the storm clouds that gathered around Winterfell before a blizzard. The scars on his face seemed redder, more aggravated, than the last time she’d seen them, but his nest of black hair covered most of them from sight.

“This man claims to be Sandor Clegane,” Waylar Mazin, Sansa’s newly-appointed steward, announced from where he stood behind her. “He rode in on a heavy, black courser and immediately asked for an audience Your Majesty, Queen Sansa.”

Sansa nodded, unsure about what else she could say or do. Her mouth ran dry as she noticed Sandor’s eyes hadn’t strayed from her since the very moment she’d seated herself, not once. She couldn’t stop her heart from fluttering in her chest like a hummingbird’s wings as she recalled the kiss they’d shared years ago when the Blackwater had been afire. It had happened so long ago, yet she remembered it so well.

His lips had tasted sour, yet sweet, like the watered-down wine her father had ordered her and Arya be served with their dinners, but their texture had been what surprised her the most. She’d always expected them to be coarse and tough, like sandpaper against her own silky mouth, but they’d been soft, except for the scarred parts which had been rough but not in a bad way.

He’d kissed her like she was something to be cherished or worshipped. Before that moment, she’d only ever had little pecks on the lips, things that made her stomach tremble, while this kiss had set her ablaze. She’d felt like the Maiden incarnate and had compared every other touch a man had ever laid upon her to that drunken kiss.

And, Gods, she’d wanted more.

Staring at him now, Sansa wondered if he even remembered the kiss. He’d been so drunk at the time. Without glancing down at herself, she tried to remember what she’d looked like in the mirror that morning. Had she looked pretty? She more than likely looked ragged and worn, as she did most days these past few months.

She’d worn one of her more simple gowns—an unadorned dress of dove gray fabric with long sleeves and a high neck—for comfort and ease while she worked her way through pile after pile of paperwork. The crown atop her head probably seemed plain due to the way she’d only allowed her handmaidens to weave her long, fiery locks into a loose braid. No rouge had been painted onto her pale cheeks, nothing covered the shadows under her eyes.

Sansa knew she’d looked far better in King’s Landing in those expensive gowns of silk and satin that she’d embroidered with colorful patterns and bright flowers. Her hair hadn’t lacked any luster there, not when she’d allowed her maids to brush it several times a day before decorating it in the most elaborate styles. Even her skin had been in far better shape, all milky and soft, after she’d been bathed in the most sweet-smelling soaps.

After a while, she realized she had gone too long without speaking. She wasn’t even sure her voice would work, but she managed to croak out, “Why have you come here, Lord Clegane?” in the steadiest voice she could manage. “I had assumed you would take up the lordship at your keep.”

The Hound scoffed lightly, grumbling something under his breath that she couldn’t quite catch, before saying, “I have no wish to return to that monstrosity, let some other man take it.”

“What is it you wish then?” Sansa asked as her confusion got the better of her.

She’d known, of course, that the Hound would never want to return to Clegane Keep, but it was strange to hear him admit to it while standing before her in the court she ruled over. It was strange for him to be in Winterfell at all, especially now that she was Queen of the North, though she supposed that had to due with the fact that it was so very strange to have him looking up at her with pleading eyes, not the other way around.

In all the years she’d known him in King’s Landing, he’d always been the one in a position of authority over her. He’d been a Kingsguard, after all, while she’d simply been the king’s plaything, something for that cruel boy to take out when he was bored and toss it back into its cage whenever he was done torturing it for every squeak it managed to emit.

“I was hoping to find a place amongst your guard, Your Majesty.”

Sansa didn’t even have to question if his words were a trick. Many of her lords and ladies would suggest that it was a plot of some sort against her life, though she couldn’t imagine why Sandor would want her dead. She knew her Council would advise her to take heed and consider her options carefully, but she knew there was no reason to be fearful of a trick.

Unlike so many men in her life, the Hound had never lied to her. When she’d been nothing but a girl, he’d said horrible things to her, yet all of it had been a way to try and get her to see the world for what it was: a terribly cruel place where little birds were plucked from their mother’s nests by vipers in the dark of the night. He’d always told her the truth, even when the truth hurt her almost as much as Joffrey’s torments.

And yet . . .

“Leave us.”

Sansa’s command swept through the room like a wildfire, wilting everything in its path. She saw the confusion on their faces and knew that they couldn’t possibly understand why she would want to be alone in the same room as such a brute, but she couldn’t remember the last time she’d been scared of the fearsome Hound, not when his had been the only gentle hands to lay upon her in King’s Landing.

“Do I have to repeat myself?” Sansa asked past gritted teeth as nobody made a move to exit the grand hall. “I would like a moment to speak with my guest in private, please.”

“You heard the queen,” Greatjon Umber yelled boisterously across the crowd, waving for them all to make their way towards the door. “She said get the hell out!”

Sansa sent the giant of a man a grateful look as he shepherded everyone out of the room and slammed the doors shut behind himself, leaving her and Sandor in the same room for the first time since King’s Landing. Though, now that they were alone, Sansa had to admit she had no idea what she was supposed to say.

“You killed your brother,” she blurted out before she could stop herself.

When Bran had sent news of the Mountain’s shocking death, Sansa had known without a doubt who had managed the feat. There was only one man so stupidly blinded by revenge as to fight that monstrosity of a man, especially after Cersei’s supposed experimentation of the creature that had been frightening enough as an ordinary man.

“I did,” he answered gruffly.

“Have you found the peace you sought with his death?” Sansa asked, remembering the way her own serving of justice had made her feel. She’d never thought hearing someone’s screams as they were being eaten alive by hounds would bring her any modicum of happiness, but the joy she’d felt as Ramsay Bolton's dying screams rang throughout the halls of Winterfell had been unparalleled. “Did you get your revenge?"

“I suppose so,” he replied, though he didn’t sound so sure. She tilted her head in question, prompting him to explain. “It wasn’t really him near the end. He was just a beast that needed putting down, not a monster deserving of justice.”

She nodded.

“You said you wanted to join my guard,” Sansa said casually, wondering if she’d even heard him right earlier. Maybe he’d said something far different. “Why?”

“I never felt at home in Clegane Keep, nor Casterly Rock,” Sandor said in a strange, almost wobbly tone that didn’t suit him. His eyes darted from her face to the tapestries hanging behind her to the crown on her head and down to the floor where they finally stayed. “King’s Landing is a shithole if I ever saw one.”

Sansa felt a warm blush creeping up into her fair cheeks at his use of such coarse language in front of a lady, a queen, but she knew it was just the way he was. “I’d heard you were here in Winterfell for a couple of days before the Long Night.”

She couldn't admit the fact that she’d thought about visiting him before the Night King’s armies settled upon them. She couldn’t bring herself to talk about her girlish fantasies where she’d seen herself blushing as he’d kissed her like he had that last night in King’s Landing, like she’d never been kissed since.

“Aye,” Sandor replied, though he seemed reluctant to answer. “I spent a little here before those undead bastards decided to terrorize the place. I liked it.”

“You liked Winterfell?” Sansa scoffed, not that she was offended. She was surprised, in all honesty. Most Southerners found her home to be cold and unbearable, especially when compared to the lands of sun and warmth where they came from. “You’re japing me, My Lord.”

“Ach,” Sandor grumbled and waved away her ways hastily. “None of that ‘My Lord’ stuff. I’m no lord, not a ser either, so don’t even think about it.” She hid a smile at his response, having known he’d throw a fit about titles at least once during their conversation. “But, yes, I liked it here. It’s not so flowery as where I came from.”

Sansa stifled a laugh as she remembered his aversion to any and all things she had grown up adoring as a proper young lady. Flowers. Jewelry. Songs. Titles. Stories. Knights. He thought it was all useless hogwash, and he was right. Pretty flowers and handsome knights had never gotten her anywhere in life. Songs, though . . . Sansa seemed to remember a time when she’d sang him a song and he’d gifted her with a kiss.

“You’re welcome to stay in the North, even at Winterfell, without being one of my guards,” Sansa said, watching his face with careful eyes as she tried to gouge his reaction. “Why would you choose to bind yourself to me instead of being a, uh, farmer or sheepherder? You could go lead a simple life with a pretty wife.”

“A simple life and pretty wife was never in the cards for me,” he replied with a hint of self-loathing in his voice, “not with a face like this.” For the first time since they’d begun talking about his reasons for staying, his eyes rose to meet hers, steel gray on Tully blue, and he said, “I would be honored to serve you for as long as my life allows.”

Sansa bit her bottom lip and his eyes followed the movement, growing wider and darker than she’d seen them since he’d arrived. She stood from her throne and strode down the dais with slow, uncaring steps until she was in front of him, staring up into his scarred face. “You spent half your life bound to the Lannisters,” she reminded him, hoping it wouldn’t change his mind. “Are you sure you want to chain yourself to me?”

“A dog needs to be put on a leash,” he replied in a low, gruff voice as he craned his neck to stare down at her. He let out a puff of breath, and she could smell that there was no wine or mead in his body. All that he said now, he was saying as a sober man. “And you are no Lannister, Little Bird.”

Sansa’s breath caught at the old nickname. She’d thought she would never hear it again, though she couldn’t even count on her fingers and toes the amount of times she’d imagined him saying it to her face, whispering it in her ear. “I used to be,” she quipped, finally able to laugh about her first marriage.

His face darkened and he inhaled sharply, killing her laughter as quickly as it had come. She realized he probably thought Tyrion had taken advantage of her, as his lawful wife he’d had every right, but she couldn’t find it in herself to defend Tyrion, not at the moment. Maybe she’d be able to tell him everything later on, but she couldn’t bring herself to look back on some of her memories with him standing before her as he was.

“Would you swear yourself to me?” Sansa asked, voice trembling.

“Yes,” he replied almost instantly.

“Would you spend your life protecting me?”

“Yes,” he breathed.

“Okay,” was the only word Sansa could think to say when he was staring down at her like that, all dark and tortured. Her traitorous mind traveled back to that kiss, finding it foggy in the light of him being close enough that it could happen again. “You can be my sworn shield.”

She turned her back on him before she did anything she’d regret. There was nothing more to say, nothing more that she thought she would be able to say, but she wished there was more they could do. Wishing was all she could do, though.

Sansa knew she was no longer the little bird he’d adored back in King’s Landing, even if that affection had been born out of a duty to see her protected. If he’d loved her then, or even cared for her just a little bit, she was sure he wouldn’t like the woman she’d become. Years of cruelty and one horrible thing after the other had made her kindness turn to ice.

The little bird he’d once known had become a wolf.


	2. Chapter Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, this is a little more political than I intended it to be. Sansa's just taking care of business in this one. She's gotta defend her man, you know? No SanSan in this one :-( . Don't you worry, though. There's more where this came from!

Sansa awoke with her chest rising heavily to accommodate her frightened, gulping breaths. A strangled sob left her lips as her dreams—no, _nightmares_ was the more accurate word _—_ flooded her brain once again. Once, someone had told her that it wasn’t unusual to forget your dreams when she’d admitted to never remembering her own; that had been when her dreams were about forgettable knights and silly songs.

She reached out almost automatically for the glass of water she kept by her bedside at all times. She lapped the liquid down as thirstily as a dog, reveling in the crystal clear liquid and how it soothed her raw throat. The glass was slammed back onto the bedside table with little care, resulting in a loud, annoying clink that shot right into the pain in her forehead.

Sun streamed through the curtains of her chambers, casting her bed in a warm, peaceful light, yet Sansa felt cold. Ice shot through her veins, forcing her fingers into painfully stiff positions. It was a result of her nightmares, she’d learned, since she never felt cold in the open air of the North. Nowadays, she always woke up freezing, no matter how brightly the fire in her hearth burned.

“Your Grace,” a soft voice echoed from Sansa’s door as it slid open quietly. Her handmaiden, Penna, stepped into the room with concern etched across her features. “I didn’t think I’d find you awake at this hour.”

Sansa shrugged, a habit she’d picked up from Arya in the short time they’d spent together before she sailed off on her new adventure, and said, “I had a restless sleep,” in a nonchalant tone that practically begged Penna not to ask why.

Penna stared at Sansa a moment more, her deep, dark eyes searching for something, though Sansa had no idea what, before she responded, “Maester Orwen has a wonderful tea for such a thing. I could send some for you to try.”

Sansa nodded half-heartedly, though she didn’t have it in her heart to tell Penna that she’d already tried the tea. It had a sweet, floral drink, which she’d loved due to her taste for anything sugared, but it had only made her nights worse. While she had fallen asleep quickly, there had been no peace that night. She had been trapped in one nightmare after the other, unable to pull herself out of the heavy darkness holding her under.

“I have a meeting with the Council, don’t I?” Sansa asked quickly to change the subject, even though she already knew the answer. She jumped out of her bed, throwing the furs away from her body, and lowered herself onto the stool in front of her vanity. “We should start preparing for that.”

“What’s the Council meeting about, Your Grace?” Penna questioned as she ran the bristled brush through Sansa’s long, red locks.

“I don’t rightly know,” Sansa answered honestly as she fiddled with the hem of her nightshift. “If I had to guess,” Sansa hummed for a moment as she tried to think of the reasons behind the meeting, “perhaps updates on the glass garden repairs, discussions about the extinct houses and how to fill their places, stuff like that.”

Penna brushed through a particularly tough knot in Sansa’s thick locks before asking, “Do you think they’ll want to discuss the Hound?”

Sansa froze. The hand on her shift’s hem stopped mid-fiddle before crushing the thin fabric in her clenched fist. She wanted to pretend she imagined the blush rising her cheeks when she saw it in the mirror, but she could feel the heat creeping up her neck. “Why would they want to discuss Lord Clegane?”

Penna narrowed her eyes as she looked at Sansa in the mirror, probably noticing the uneven tremor in her voice. “Well, the Hound—,”

“Please don’t call him that,” Sansa said quietly, yet with enough force that Penna’s brows rose before the girl nodded. “He’s no longer the Lannister’s prized dog.”

“Anyways,” Penna continued in a light, calm voice, “Ser Clegane—,”

“He’s not a knight,” Sansa interrupted before she could stop herself.

Penna huffed in annoyance and took a rough swipe of her brush over Sansa’s hair, causing it to pull too harshly against her scalp and ignite a sharp pain at the root. “Would you please let me finish, Your Majesty?”

Sansa nodded, feeling cowed by the petite girl.

“Good.” Penna went back to brushing through Sansa’s hair with soft, soothing motions, reminding Sansa of all the times her mother had done the same. “Lord Clegane used to be a Lannister man, and he is known for being a ruthless killer.”

“He fought for the North during the Long Night,” Sansa reminded her, though she didn’t speak as sharply as when she’d been correcting the girl on his titles. “He could’ve ran away and stayed out of the fight, but he chose to fight alongside our men.”

“So did Jaime Lannister,” Penna remarked as she set the brush down on the ivory surface of Sansa’s handcrafted vanity. “He ran right back into the arms of Cersei.”

Sansa knew the girl was right. About Jaime, not Sandor. She remembered Brienne’s letter about Jaime’s death, how short and sweet it had been, yet there had been so many emotions lurking behind it. During the few days he’d spent in Winterfell before the end, she’d sensed something between them from their not-so-casual glances and the strange blushes in Brienne’s snowy cheeks. She had no doubt in her mind that Brienne had loved Jaime, even if he had betrayed them.

Sandor had not betrayed them, and she knew that he never would.

Once upon a time, he’d been bound to the Lannisters. Though he never gave them his vow, he served them out of honor and loyalty. When that bond had been broken, Sansa had thought he would never take an oath, especially since he’d never given one to the family he’d protected for more than half of his life.

And yet, he’d trudged through the ice and snow of Winter to make his way to her home, her keep. He had stood before her and promised to make a vow to _her_. She knew it would be the only vow he ever swore, the first and the last, though she still had no idea. All she knew was that she trusted him and his words with her life, even if both were a little rough around the edges.

“I will vouch for him with all the power I have as the Queen in the North,” Sansa growled as she watched Penna pull back two thin strands of her hair from either side of her head and weave them into two thin braids that she tied off behind Sansa’s head. “And no one will say another word about it or they’ll discover why I’m called the Red Wolf.”

In truth, the nickname had been given to her by the GreatJon because of her flaming red hair—it had been a joke of sorts when she was a young, proper lady—but it had been reignited like a dying fire after word had spread of her punishment for Ramsay. When the men learned she’d let his own hounds eat him alive while she watched, they decided she was meant to be named the Red Wolf for more than just the color of her hair.

Penna smirked at her lady’s response and replied, “You surely are the fiercest wolf of Winterfell, Queen Sansa.”

Within the next half hour, Sansa was dressed in one of her usual gowns. The high necks and long sleeves had become a sort of armor that hid away her most vulnerable pieces. Without them, she felt naked, no matter how appropriately she was dressed. They kept her safe in a world where men and women would pick apart her most exposed self and use it against her.

Only Penna knew why her lady insisted on wearing the overly-modest gowns, though she never said a word about it, especially not after she’d seen the scars littering Sansa’s back, her legs, her arms, her stomach, her chest, everywhere that could be easily covered. She had gasped the first time she’d seen them, eyes wide and mouth gaping in surprise, but one look at Sansa’s face, stony and unrelenting, and she’d become like stone, too.

Sansa didn’t even have to brace herself for the cold as she made her way through the open-aired halls of Winterfell. Dozens of places in the keep were now exposed to the elements, thanks to the destruction of the Night King’s creatures, but Sansa was comforted by a cold that wasn’t brought to her by nightmares of past lives. It was a natural cold that made her cheeks turn red and her heart beat like one of the lively songs of her homeland.

As always, lords and ladies stopped her along her path to the Council chamber, which she’d accounted for by leaving her chamber a few minutes earlier than necessary. Most of them offered simple pleasantries, asking about her morning or what she planned to wear to the grand ball Winterfell was hosting in a fortnight, while others, the more insipid ones, cornered her to discuss the progress on rebuilding their keeps.

She had few answers for the former, even fewer for the latter. Instead, she offered them courtesies and well-wishes before continuing on her path with excuses of being very busy and late for important meetings.

When she finally made it to the Council chambers, Sansa found a quiet room. The silence irked her nerves as she walked around to the head of the table on steady feet and sat in her chair with a straight back and a high chin, the way her septa had taught her when she was a young, eager-to-please girl whose only aspirations were to be a proper lady.

“Shall we begin?” Sansa asked the room as she glanced down at the papers laid out before her. “I have a list of things to do today so long that it could stretch to the Wall and back.” It was meant as a joke—she’d even added a little half-laugh—yet no one else in the room could manage a chuckle. There wasn’t a smile in sight. “I see grim is the mood we’re going for today.”

“You have accepted Clegane’s proposal to be your sworn shield,” Jorvan, the middle-aged lord of House Holt, stated, no hint of a question in his tone.

“I have,” Sansa replied steadily, making sure to meet his eyes and hold his gaze as she did so. “As you all know, my previous sworn shield, Brienne of Tarth, was released from her vow so that she may serve my brother in King’s Landing.” She felt a pinch of sadness at the thought of Brienne so far away from her after all they’d been through together. “I have no prior engagements to keep me from taking on a new shield, and I trust Lord Clegane to fulfill his duties with honor and loyalty.”

“He was the Lannister’s dog,” Elyse Mollen argued from her place across from Jorvan. The new Lady of Mollen looked about to burst with annoyance at the prospect of one of the Lannister’s creatures being allowed in Winterfell. “He should be sent back to the south where he belongs.”

Agreement in the form of a harrumph came from Tobin Manderly, the nephew and sole heir to Wyman Manderly, though he chose wisely enough in keeping his mouth closed against further noises when she sent a daring glare in his direction.

Having heard their opinions, Sansa shot a glance at the young woman seated at the opposite end of the table. Her dark, wild curls fell around her shoulders in an unstyled pouf as she thumbed the edge of her dagger. “What do you think about this, Meera?”

Meera Reed looked up at the rest of them for the first time since Sansa entered the room and sighed. “He used to work for the Lannisters, that’s true,” she said, punching a hole in Sansa’s already sinking ship, but she shrugged her shoulders and slipped her knife back into her sheath as she continued on, “but he fought for the living with our men during the Long Night.”

Sansa could have hugged the girl for her semi-help in the matter. Her words weren’t exactly what Sansa wanted to hear, but they were enough to remind the rest of the Council about Sandor’s heroics, even if Sansa thought they shouldn’t have needed reminding in the first place. “I am glad _someone_ chose to remember that little fact,” Sansa remarked coolly.

“I choose to remember a story I heard about the Hound and an innocent butcher’s boy,” Jorvan sniped, sounding all too much like someone from Sansa’s past that she’d longed to forget. “Of course, it might be more fiction than fact, but I know there are plenty of other tales that go about the same.”

Sansa gritted her teeth, hoping the movement was hidden from the lords and ladies. Jorvan was reminding her of all the reasons she didn’t care for him, but she’d convinced herself that he was an essential lord to have on her Council when she’d created it. His House might be one of the smaller, less influential ones, but Jorvan had made a name for himself as a charming, persuasive lord with a pocket of gold from his merchant endeavors. Those were only the smallest reasons why she couldn’t risk ostracizing him, even if she wanted to wipe that smug grin off his damned face.

“I assure you,” Sansa made sure to look all of them in the eye with determination, “there are plenty of stories about me and my siblings that are worse.” She fingered the sharp tip at the end of her favored necklace, letting it glint in the sunlight streaming through the windows of the chamber. “I am sure you all recall the massacre of House Frey.”

It wasn’t a threat, especially not towards her loyal liege lords and ladies. It was a warning to any who might turn traitor against House Stark. Though the true mastermind behind that massacre was never revealed, many suspected a Stark to be behind the brutal deaths of the entire house. None, save for her family, knew the youngest Stark girl had dealt out the revenge herself.

“We have all done things we regret in the name of loyalty and honor,” Sansa stated, raising a brow at Elyse as she started to object, cutting the girl’s pretty lies short. “Sandor Clegane is no different, and I intend to give him a chance to be a loyal citizen of the North.”

Their silence filled the air, but no objections followed it. She swept a gaze around the room, noting the disdain still marring Jorvan’s features, and found Elyse and Tobin staring at each other with such depth and emotion that she had to turn her eyes to Meera to avoid blushing. The wild-haired girl smirked at her and nodded, admiration clearly written across her face. Sansa wondered if her sharp words and veiled warnings had gained her that approval.

“Now, let’s get to business,” Sansa grabbed the stack of papers in front of her and leaned back in her chair in a casual, uncaring position, “shall we?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> P.S. Do you guys like that I brought Meera in? I always liked her character and didn't appreciate the way the show just tossed her aside and never brought her up again. She's not going to be a big character in this, but she'll be an ally, of sorts, for Sansa.


	3. Chapter Three

The grunt that fell from Sansa’s lips was knocked free by frustration and the jolting pain of being knocked into the snow-littered ground, _again_. She tightened her clenched grip around the hilt of her dagger as she forced herself to stand once more, gritting her teeth against the ache in her backside and upper thighs.

Meera stared back at her with only a little bit of satisfaction and a whole bunch of intense focus. Her wild curls jostled in the wind as she dove in for a strike, her blades glinting in the sunlight shining down on the training yard, but Sansa twisted away from the blade at the last second, just barely dodging the sly move.

She’d been working with Meera on her martial skills since the week after her coronation and her skills had been steadily improving, though she knew she was nowhere near ready for a battle of any kind. Before that, Arya had trained her so she could protect those with her in the crypts during the battle against the undead.

When she’d asked Meera, the girl had blushed and admitted to not being the most skilled of fighters with blades. She claimed that her talent was mostly with the bow or a staff, but Sansa recognized talent when she watched Meera train with the other soldiers. Nobody could be her sister, Sansa admitted, but Meera was as good as a woman as any to train her.

Sansa, much to her reluctance, had grown to like the training she received. It wasn’t much different than the dancing lessons she’d learned from Septa Mordane, except for the fact that wielding a blade was a dance to the death in most cases. Her feet were the easiest part of her to train because they already knew how to be swift and graceful and steady, which Meera complimented her for, saying that it was all a part of swordsmanship.

Though she disliked the crudeness of swords, Sansa had quickly discovered that archery was not for her. On her first try, she’d almost taken the eye out of some serving girl's head. She continued her practice, but the same result kept popping up twenty tries later. Eventually, she’d thrown down the bow in frustration and told Meera she would rather learn with daggers.

When Meera pounced again, Sansa caught her blade with her own, blocking the attack before it could get anywhere near her body. The skirt of her dress, which she insisted on wearing despite the fact that it was much easier to fight in trousers, swished against the stone ground as she moved her feet to properly brace herself against the pressure Meera pushed against her.

Sansa knew she was still very much a beginner and that it could take years to learn how to wield a blade correctly, but she felt a flush of confidence rush over her as she ducked out of their locked daggers and kicked her leg, trying to trip the other girl while she was distracted. To her disappointment, Meera didn’t fall back into the powdery snow as Sansa had hoped, but she did stumble backward a few steps.

The match continued for a short while, maybe five minutes at the most, before Meera knocked Sansa onto her back and held her dagger above the spot where Sansa’s heart was beating a rapid staccato against her ribs.

Sansa groaned as pain lanced up her spine once again, much as it had at the beginning of their training sessions. After the past couple of months of training, she’d gotten used to the aches and pains in her underused muscles, but they still hurt enough after each time they practiced that she had to take a hot bath and rub sweet-smelling oils into her skin.

Without thinking, Sansa reached out her hand to be pulled up, as she always did at the end of their sessions, but found a large, calloused hand surrounding hers. She opened her clenched eyes to find Sandor staring down at her with confusion and concern etched into his features. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing with a blade, Little Bird?”

Over his shoulder, Sansa saw one of Meera’s dark brows raise the affectionate nickname and the crude language, but the girl didn’t say anything as she sharpened her blade with a stone and slunk away to hide behind one of the nearby columns.

“Practicing,” Sansa replied without a more thorough explanation as she allowed him to pull her to her feet.

“Practicing getting knocked on your ass,” Sandor grumbled gruffly, eyeing her nervously as she shoved her own blade back into the belt she’d tucked around her waist before practice. “Looks like you’re getting pretty good at it, girl.”

Sansa bristled at that word. _Girl._ She hadn’t been a _girl_ for a long time, not since she’d watched her father’s head fall away from his neck. “Practicing how to defend myself,” Sansa snapped as she crossed her arms over her chest in defiance and marched away from the training yards.

“That wild girl is teaching you how to fight,” Sandor assumed as he followed her, not catching the drift that she wanted to be alone. “She’s not doing a very good job.”

“ _She’s_ not taking it easy on me,” Sansa stated sharply, not liking his comments on Meera’s skills. She nodded and shot sweet pleasantries to passersby as she made her way across the courtyard with Sandor following close behind. “All the men I asked to train me treated me like a porcelain doll. I wasn’t learning anything.”

“I could teach you,” Sandor offered.

Sansa halted her brisk pace and turned to study him. His face was earnest, open, and she noticed the dark hair that usually covered his scars had been combed back, revealing his marred face to the world. A part of her whispered that he looked like a fierce lord of the North. “I appreciate your offer,” Sansa said sincerely, “but I don’t think your fighting style would work with my level of strength.”

One of his brows rose in confusion, spurring her on.

“I’ll admit to being a spoiled child in my youth,” Sansa said as she continued her walk, though slower so as not to put him through ragged paces, even if she knew he could handle it. “My childhood made me weak.” She couldn’t blame all that happened to her on her upbringing, but she could blame her physical shortcomings on only being taught how to sew pretty handkerchiefs, not how to lift swords like her brothers. “I cannot physically handle a sword, nor do I have the time to strengthen my body to be able to, but I _can_ wield daggers.”

Sandor stayed quiet for a long moment, his eyes watching her with their dark gray uncertainties, before he shrugged and said, “As you wish.”

Sansa narrowed her eyes at the words. Where had his harsh bark gone? Why wasn’t he snapping at her for being foolish? She wasn’t used to this Sandor, but she supposed the opposite could be true as well. He probably had no idea what to say to a Little Bird that wanted to wield a blade instead of chirping sweet songs for noble knights. Perhaps they’d both changed too much since their time in King’s Landing for them to know each other.

Before Sansa knew where her feet had taken her, the pair were standing in front of the Godswood. She would be lying if she didn’t admit to trying to avoid the tree and its all-seeing eyes since they’d retaken Winterfell from the Boltons. She’d stepped into the Godswood a couple of times, of course, but those times lasted only a few minutes before she became too nervous or anxious and fled.

A sharp pang of regret flooded her chest as she realized that the last time she’d stood before it had been with her siblings. The sudden need to pray for her siblings, for their welfare in their adventures, flared up inside her. She hadn’t prayed in so long, though, that she didn’t even know if the Old Gods would listen to her. Maybe they’d shut her out when she’d turned to worship the Seven in their cold septs to gain her mother’s approval.

Her father had told them a thousand times that the Old Gods had no power in the South, but Sansa hadn’t believed any of his old folk tales until she’d experienced the cruelty of those who followed the Seven and began praying to the gods of her ancestors, time and time again. Eventually, she’d realized they weren’t answering her prayers and began faking the worship simply for time alone from prying eyes and teetering whispers.

For the first time in a very long time, Sansa found herself kneeling before the heart tree with her hands clasped loosely in her lap. She closed her eyes, uncaring if Sandor saw and heard her from where he stood so close behind her, and fervently whispered her prayers:

_“Gods, hear me and watch over my sister as she journeys to a new world.”_

_“Hear me and protect my brother from the vipers in the South.”_

_Hear me and guide Jon into his new life Beyond the Wall.”_

She wasn’t sure, exactly, if that was how prayers to the Old Gods went—she’d been too young to remember when her father taught her the correct words—but she felt as if the gods had heard her somehow. The wind whistled through the clearing, shifting the hair that rested upon her shoulders. With it, the soft, calming scent of lavender, the herb her mother had used for perfume, circled her in a warm embrace, despite the dying winter winds, reminding her of a mother’s hug.

Sansa took a deep breath, inhaling the smell and memorizing it as best she could, before it disappeared and she was left with two little words floating around inside her head: _We will._ She wasn’t sure if it had been her own mind that had conjured the words or if that ancient voice had actually been the gods, but she allowed it to soothe her worries, if only for a little while, as she rose to her feet again and turned to face Sandor.

“The last time I prayed in this place, to these gods,” Sansa paused to take a steadying breath and force herself to meet his eyes, “it was during my wedding to Ramsay Bolton.” She laughed at herself in a cold, bitter way as she thought of how foolhardy she’d been. “I pleaded with the Old Gods for him to be a kind and gentle man, like my father would have wanted for me.”

Sandor’s eyes held a hint of pain as he said, “You don’t have to tell me this, Sansa.”

“No, I do,” Sansa argued, knowing that she could never allow him to swear himself to her if he didn’t know at least a fraction of who she’d become. “The gods didn’t listen to my prayers.” She shrugged as she laid her hand on the tree, stroking its tough, white bark. “I didn’t really expect them to after how long I’d shunned them.”

“I heard rumors about what the bastard did to you,” Sandor mumbled in a voice that made him sound almost uncomfortable with the topic. “I don’t know the whole of it or if there is any truth in the rumors, but I would have killed him a thousand times over if I’d known then.”

“I know,” Sansa replied softly, remembering his promise during the Battle of the Blackwater. _No one would hurt you again, or I’d kill them._ She’d dreamed of that night over and over again in her head, replaying his words, his touch, his kiss, as a way to escape the horrors of her life. “I always wondered what it would have been like if I had gone with you the night of the Blackwater.”

“You should’ve,” Sandor grumbled as the flat line of his mouth curved downwards into a frown. “None of those things would have happened to you if you were with me.” She knew he meant his words, that he believed them. “I would have kept you safe.”

“I regretted my choice for a long time,” Sansa replied honestly, thinking back to all the times she’d thought about running away and finding him after everything had happened, “but I would still be a Little Bird if I had run away with you. I don’t regret who I am now, even if I can’t stand the things that brought me to this place.”

Sandor was silent, almost as if he was thinking. She thought she spied regret in his eyes, maybe guilt or remorse, but before she could latch on to it he’d cleared his expression to a blank slate. Back in King’s Landing, his emotions had been so clear on his face. She had known them without having to guess: anger, disgust, annoyance. They’d all been so easy to read, at least for her they were. She wondered if killing his brother had changed him so much or something else.

“I am no longer the Little Bird you cared for in King’s Landing,” Sansa stated in a steady voice, even if her insides trembled with the thought of what she was doing. “I don’t chirp pretty songs and hope for handsome knights to save me.”  
“Why are you telling me all this?” Sandor asked, confusion evident in the furrow of his brows.

“Because you need to know who you will be serving should you swear your vows to me,” Sansa responded instantaneously. “I will not be a soft, sweet creature that needs you to sweep her into your arms any time somebody raises their voice at her.”

_I have my own set of claws now,_ she thought.

“I’ve known that since the moment I saw you seat your throne,” Sandor replied casually. He looked her square in the eye, something people rarely did anymore, and gestured to himself. “I’m still here, aren’t I?”

Her vision blurred slightly as an onslaught of tears clouded her vision. Although she hadn’t admitted it to herself out loud, she had thought he would revoke his offer and run away, preferring to sell his sword to someone else. “But I’m so different,” Sansa protested weakly, needing to make sure he knew what he was signing up for. “I don’t even recognize myself from my memories of King’s Landing. You won’t recognize me, either.”

Sandor shrugged. “When I look at you now,” he stepped forward and placed a hand on her shoulder, squeezing it lightly for reassurance, “I still see the Little Bird I once knew. You just learned to use the talons I always knew you had.”

Sansa let the tears slip out at his words, not particularly caring if he saw them. He’d seen her in worse states and had already thought her strong enough for talons. She wrapped her arms around his waist and pulled him forward to cry into his tunic, thankful that, for once, someone wasn’t sad or pitying to see how she’d hardened to life.

All of the people she held dear—Jon, Arya, and even Bran in his own way—had looked at her with varying degrees of sorrow and regret when they’d first gotten back together. She knew they were mourning the loss of her innocent sweetness, hating the way she seemed to be made more of ice than the kind songs Septa Mordane had taught her. 

And she’d hated it.

She knew that a part of Sandor was like them, saddened by the loss of her lively youth and sweet words, but the larger part of him knew that she was better off knowing the world wasn’t about flowers and love stories. He’d always been trying to teach her that lesson by barking at her or telling her harsh truth she’d tried not to believe, but they’d never stuck because he never truly wanted to hurt her by revealing the world’s true nature.

Joffrey, Cersei, Littlefinger, and Ramsay had ripped off the bandage covering her childhood wounds and left them to fester with their tortures and cruel lies. She could never be happy or at peace with what they’d done to her, but she wouldn’t change who she’d become because   
Sansa of House Stark, the Queen in the North, the Red Wolf, would never allow herself to become someone’s pawn or plaything again.

Just as Jon had become who he was after losing so many friends and loved ones to the Whitewalkers and being stabbed through the heart by those he trusted most. Arya would never have become the Brave Wolf if not for the trials of the Faceless Men and the hardships that came after their father’s death. There was no telling if Bran wouldn’t be the Three-Eyed Raven if he hadn’t been crippled, but he’d lost so many on his journey to becoming the King of Westeros.

Her siblings were forged by their hardships. They’d gone from mere children, playing in the snow with their joy and innocence intact, to become the newest legends of Westeros. If it hadn’t been for their misfortunes, what would have happened to the kingdom? Who would have saved the North from the Boltons? The South from Cersei, the Mad Queen? The world from the Whitewalkers?

With all that spinning around in her mind, reminding herself that she was a queen because of what her troubled past had turned her into, she hugged Sandor Clegane, a man who’d survived his own tribulations, and let him hold her through the tears that fell from her eyes. She wasn’t sure what she was crying for: a small amount of grief at the loss of her innocence; joy that the man she felt safest with cared for her after she had become what she was; stress that the weight of the North was on her shoulders.

They stayed like that for a long while before Sansa pulled back, straightening her shoulders and combing her fingers through her hair, and announced that she had mountains of paperwork to get done. She strode away without looking back, but she knew he was following closely behind, protecting the little bird that had turned into a fierce wolf.


	4. Chapter Four

As much as Sansa didn’t want Sandor’s vow to her to be a public affair, the Council agreed that it would be best to make it a celebration with a feast and everything. She took a small amount of consolation from the fact that they weren’t sending out invitations to all the nobles of the land. Only those who’d chosen to wait out the end of Winter in the keep would be attending, mainly because it would take too long to send out the invitations and they feared the swearing-in would take away from the upcoming royal ball and festivities.

So, with all their considerations in mind, Sansa was given exactly one week to prepare a feast and party for when Sandor would take his vows to become her sworn shield, and she wasn’t wasting a minute of it. Despite not wanting a large party, she wasn’t going to let the opportunity to host a gathering go to waste, not when her skills as a hostess could draw many allies to her side. 

After all, there were still many Northern lords that didn’t particularly like the fact that a woman ruled over the land, even if some of their most noble houses were traditionally ruled by women; Bear Island, for example, was known for its warrior women. That didn’t matter, though, because, to them, Sansa had been compromised in every way possible.

She’d been married to a Lannister, although many of them seemed to forget that it had been against her will as she had been a prisoner of the crown. Her relationship with Littlefinger had made sure that many people thought of her as nothing more than a liar and aunt-killer. What happened with Ramsay was widely disputed as false, especially since many men thought rape couldn’t happen in the marriage bed.

If a feast could help improve her status and gain some respect in the eyes of these men, Sansa would do whatever it took to make it the best celebration to ever happen at Winterfell. The first thing Sansa did in preparation was to visit the seamstress in the winter town.

She rode to the small town with two guards in tow, having decided that she didn’t want Sandor to see the dress she was designing for the festivities. As she rode through the icy wooded area outside Winterfell, she was glad she’d begged Arya to teach her how to ride a horse before she’d departed for her adventures, especially since she’d found that straddling the horse, which she’d always insulted her little sister for, was a thousand times better than riding the way proper ladies did.

Sansa slowed her horse to a halt outside the stables in the winter town and dismounted with the grace that had always accompanied her through life. The stableboy was given a shiny copper and strict instructions to watch over her pretty mare, lest Sansa turn into a wolf and gobble him up. She’d joked about the last part, but the boy’s eyes had widened as he gulped down a lump in his and scurried off to tend to her horse.

It was a folktale in the villages of the North that the Starks could turn into wolves themselves, but Sansa hadn’t actually thought people believed the stories. Of course, she supposed there was some truth to the tales, given Bran’s stories about warging into Summer. Arya herself had admitted to having vivid dreams where she was a wolf that looked suspiciously like Nymeria, her lost direwolf.

Those stories from her siblings had made Sansa’s heart pinch, though, as she’d begun wondering if she would have been able to warg into Lady had her direwolf lived through the journey to King’s Landing. Or better yet, if she’d stayed behind in Winterfell, would she and her wolf have prospered and become as close as Bran and Summer? It pained her more than a little bit that she would never know.

Chasing away those somber thoughts, Sansa grabbed the satchel she’d stuffed with a special length of cloth and turned towards the seamstress’s little shop with a light determination in her steps. People waved and curtsied at her as she passed, causing her to smile. At court, she was cumbersome to many of the lords, just a simple creature that they  _ had _ to scrape and bow to, but the people of the winter town loved the Starks, no matter what gender they were.

Sansa’s heavy heart lightened to see children running through the muddy street, laughing as they chased their friends with wooden swords, pretending to be true knights defending the kingdom. Unlike when she’d been a child, she wasn’t scandalized to see more than one young girl playing-pretend with their own weapons. It reminded her just enough of when Arya had been a little miscreant, dirtying the hems of skirts in the mud as she dreamed of being a knight with her own sword and everything.

“Your Grace,” Sansa blinked as the sudden voice made her realize she’d been standing in the same spot staring at the children for far too long, “are you alright?”

“Of course,” Sansa answered immediately. She turned to smile apologetically at her knights for worrying them. “I was just lost in thought, I suppose.”

When she stepped through the doors of the seamstress’s shop, the store’s plump owner, Elyse Cressy, jumped up from her comfortable chair and dropped into a low bow. She rose almost immediately, not being able to hold herself so low for so long, and dropped back into her chair. “What can I do for Her Grace on this fine day?” she asked with a wide smile.

Sansa knew Elyse treasured her visits, mainly because she always paid more than necessary for the woman’s fine work. She’d been sewing Sansa’s gowns since she was a young girl, even after Sansa learned to do so for herself. She had been more than a little relieved to know that the woman had survived through all that had happened since Sansa had taken her leave from Winterfell.

“I need a very special gown made,” Sansa answered as she strode forward and slid into the seat in front of Elyse’s large sewing desk, “and it needs to be done by the end of the week. Do you think you can do it?”

“What kind of gown?” Elyse asked, eyes gleaming with the challenge.

Sansa pulled her sketch out of the same satchel she’d thrown her gown’s ornament in and placed them in front of Elyse. The older woman snatched them up and studied them with squinted, gray eyes. “Hmm,” she mumbled as she traced one of her fingers over the blue outline. “This color will bring out those sapphire eyes of yours.”

“I was hoping for that,” Sansa responded lightly.

The woman nodded. “Are you thinking of velvet for the fabric?”

“If you have it,” Sansa replied, knowing that some fabrics had been harder to get than others since the Long Night. “If not, I’m sure something else in your collection will work.”

“I believe I have just enough for this design.” Elyse bit the inside of her cheek as she looked up at Sansa over the sheet of paper. “What about this white cape, hmm?” She turned the sheet over to tap the cape-like thing Sansa had attached to the gown’s back with one thick finger. “Is there anything specific you want with it?”

“About that,” Sansa bit her bottom lip and fetched the length of fabric she’d stuffed into the satchel beneath the sketch. Elyse’s eyes widened as Sansa pulled the scrappy cloak from the bag and carefully folded it across the desk in front of her. “Could you add this onto it? It has, uh,” she thought she felt the slightest traces of a warm blush rising in her cheeks, “sentimental value.”

She didn’t elaborate further about why the old cloak meant so much to her, especially with how ratty it looked after years of mistreatment. It would be symbolic to only her when Sandor vowed to protect her while she wore that cloak. A part of her hoped he recognized it while another part was screaming about how embarrassed she’d be if he did.

“I suppose I can,” Elyse frowned in distaste at the cloak as if it were a lock of hair in her stew. “I don’t understand why, but I’ll make it look good.”

“Thank you,” Sansa reached inside her bag and pulled out a small purse of coins that jangled as she sat them down on top of the cloak. “Send a page when the gown is done and someone will come by to pick it up.”

“Thank you for your business, my lady.”

Sansa nodded before leaving the establishment.

As she rode back to the gates of Winterfell, she wondered how the gown would look on her. Would it bring out the Tully blue of her eyes? Would it make her hair burn like a wintery fire? Would Sandor like it? She shook that last one free from her head as her and her knights passed through the gates and the man in question stood in the training yard, watching her return with dark, curious eyes.

Sansa reminded herself that it wouldn’t matter if he liked the gown on her. What mattered was the opinions of the lords and ladies under her rule. She needed their support and respect, as much as it pained her to admit it, even if she had proven herself to those people time and time again. Sandor Clegane’s opinion should hold no sway over her when the nobility’s was so much more important.

Her horse was quickly passed off to the stablemaster, surprising the old man since Sansa had taken to caring for the horse herself so often. She simply smiled at his confusion and thanked him for his services before patting the mare gently and turning away.

Sansa approached Sandor with all the demureness that she could muster and raised an eyebrow at him, prompting him to answer a question she’d never asked. 

“You went out with those two cunt knights,” Sandor observed with a pointed glare in the direction of the two knights that were now rough-housing near the blacksmith’s forge. “They wouldn’t have protected you from a friendly bunny, let alone the dangers outside these walls.”

“They’re as well-trained as the rest of my men,” Sansa argued, feeling the sudden need to stick up for those that defended her inside and outside of the walls of Winterfell. “They would never let anything happen to the Queen in the North.”

“You could’ve taken me with you.” Sandor stared down at her with those gray eyes that looked so Northern when next to his dark, snow-littered hair and something did a strange flip in her stomach. “I know I’m not officially your sworn shield, but I’ve made a vow to protect you all the same.”

“I only went to the seamstress,” Sansa countered with a roll of her eyes. “There was no danger in discussing gown designs with an old lady that works not even fifteen minutes away from here.”

“I’m just saying—,”

“Don’t,” Sansa interrupted kindly. She placed a hand on his shoulder, feeling the rock-hard muscles beneath and disregarding the eyes that turned their way at the light touch. “I was safe the entire time, I swear. I made it back safe and sound, didn’t I?”

“I guess,” he replied warily.

“I'm so glad we’re in agreement,” Sansa chirped before turning away to head to work on some official documents in her solar. “If you really want to spend time with me,” she found herself saying before she got too far away, “you could have dinner with me in my solar.”

She almost missed his nod as she whirled on her heel and hurried up the stairs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry for bombarding you guys with updates, but I want to get as many chapters out as I can before this new semester kicks my butt. College, ugh. I hope you guys are enjoying this story, even if it is just me writing out my thoughts out of dissatisfaction with the way the show ended. Yeah, I'm still sore about that after so many months. Anywho, I hope you guys liked this short little chapter. It's not really a crucial plot point or anything, but I felt like writing something and this just came out.
> 
> P.S. give me comments and suggestions! I love prompts!


	5. Chapter Five

Sansa’s eyes widened in surprise as a quiet rapping of knuckles echoed throughout her small solar, forcing her to turn her attention away from her mountain of paperwork to the door. She cast a wary glance back at the mountain of papers, her sight blurred from the dozens of neatly scribed words running across her eyes, and she managed to tear herself away from them long enough to call out for whoever it was to come in.

The door slid open quietly, but the silence that had descended upon her study the moment she entered it earlier that afternoon, only broken every once in a while by the crackling fire in the nearby hearth, was shattered by a gaggle of loud footsteps that she would recognize anywhere. Her eyes lifted of their own accord to find Sandor approaching her, looking altogether uncomfortable in the small, pretty room she’d made into an unofficial office.

Sansa raised an eyebrow at his slow, awkward approach. “Lord Clegane—,”

“Ach,” his face twisted in annoyance as he waved away her use of his title, “don’t come at me with the titles, Your Grace. You bloody well know I don’t fucking like them.”

“Only if you’ll stop using mine,” Sansa shot back, her red brow still raised in challenge.

Sandor huffed out a low chuckle before taking his seat across the round table and said, “Very well.” He grabbed the decanter of wine from the middle of the table and poured himself a full goblet. “If the Little Bird wishes it, then so let it be.”

She had the vague sense that he was mocking her, but it felt friendly, companionable, compared to all the times she’d been mocked in King’s Landing, in the Eyrie, in Winterfell. This was the japing between friends she’d seen others indulge in but hadn’t truly partaken in herself since before she’d traveled South to become a cruel king’s plaything. It felt . . .  _ good.  _

“What would you have me call you, then?” Sansa asked with a sly smile upon her lips. She thought of all the things she’d called him in her dreams, the ones she rarely thought about after she crawled out of her warm featherbed. “I could think of such clever nicknames for you.”

“I’m sure you could, wicked woman,” Sandor replied with a snort, “but you may call me whatever name you like. Clegane. Hound.” Sansa’s lips curled at the word, but Sandor simply shrugged. “It makes no difference to me.”

“I’ll not call you what my greatest enemies called you,” Sansa responded immediately, having thought about that for longer than would be decent to say. She’d stopped wanting to call him the Hound since long before she’d fled King’s Landing, “nor will I call you Clegane.”

“Then what, pray tell, will the Little Bird call me?” Sandor asked, seemingly amused by her rebuking both of his names. “Something from the songs, perhaps?”

“Sandor,” Sansa answered simply as she took a sip from her own goblet, feeling the sweet, yet sour blackberry wine slide down her throat, bringing a quiet warmth with it. “I shall call you by your given name, not some witty pseudonym or impersonal surname.”

Sandor nodded, feigning indifference to the matter of what she should call him, even though Sansa was sure she could see the barest hint of a smile on his lips. He took another long gulp from his wine before turning to her and gesturing towards the paperwork. “Whatcha got there, girl? Looks like more than your skinny arms can handle.”

Sansa tried not to be affronted by his assessment of her arms. They’d grown texture, some lean muscles, since she’d begun her training with Meera, though she knew they were nowhere near the size of his, nor would she ever want them to be. “I can carry it perfectly fine, thank you,” Sansa snapped, though she cast a weary glance down at the paperwork. “I just wish I could finish as well as I haul it around.”

“Aye,” Sandor’s eyes darted from her to the paperwork and back to her. “I’ll leave you to it, then. You’re probably wanting to finish it before you head to bed, eh?”

“No,” Sansa protested, her voice rising almost too loudly for the small room. She gathered her calm when she noticed his eyes widen at her outburst. “Please stay.” The words sounded too close to begging to leave the mouth of a queen, but she let them slip past anyway. “Your presence is making my night a great deal better.”

It was the truth, though she didn’t know if he would see that. Before he’d come along, she’d been resigned to filling another night with trade deals and two-party agreements. After her dinner invitation, she hadn’t expected him to actually join her, even if she had set out two plates and two goblets with two sets of utensils. When he’d walked into the room, a part of her had whispered that the night wouldn’t be so bad if he were there.

“I don’t want to distract you from your work,” he said, trying to be diplomatic while giving her a way out, but Sansa wasn’t taking any outs.

“I would like you to stay,” Sansa stated, not giving him room to wiggle his way out. “I must confess that I haven’t had many companions to speak with since my siblings and I parted ways to begin our new lives.” Tears pricked at her eyes, but she blinked them back. “I have been in need of good conversation since their departures.”

“You miss them,” Sandor observed.

“Gods, I do,” Sansa breathed.

Sansa missed Jon’s dark eyes watching out for her, making sure that none of the men ever laid a hand on her. He’d been insistent on protecting her from the moment she’d told him of everything that had happened to her since the day she’d traveled South with King Robert and his parade of foes. He’d held her as she cried, mourning over lost innocence, the terrible turn her youth had taken.

She had thought that the sentence passed onto Jon was a mercy when it had been given. After all, as Queen in the North, she could pardon a brother of the Night’s Watch and release them from their vows, couldn’t she? Jon would travel North with her entourage, but he would stop and stay at Winterfell, never even going near the ruined Wall.

That hadn’t happened, though. Jon had continued traveling, whilst Sansa stopped at Winterfell. He’d stayed one night,  _ one _ , before sneaking off at dawn to continue his journey to take the Black. She’d sent a raven after him, of course, asking why he hadn’t stayed home with her. His reply had been short, but simple enough that there was no argument to broker.

_ I can’t. _

That was all the note read.  _ I can’t.  _ Sansa had felt her knees give out beneath her when she’d read it, but the Maester had been there to catch her. A part of her wondered if it was because of his hidden heritage that he couldn’t return to Winterfell, their home, but she knew that wasn’t true. It was about the silver-haired queen he’d fallen in love with and killed with a betraying blade.

It was a life he couldn’t look back on, not yet.

Bran was the easiest not to miss, even though she still missed him with her whole heart. She knew that he was well-cared for in King’s Landing, where he reigned as King of the Six Kingdoms. He had people they all loved surrounding him. Brienne was there, as the first female Kingsguard, always watching for the Stark children in fulfillment to the oath she’d made their mother. Podrick was there, knighted and proud. Ser Davos was there, though he’d promised he would come North soon and stay.

So, Sansa knew her young brother was protected, beloved, but she still worried that the vipers would find their way back to the nest they’d abandoned. Even if Cersei Lannister, Littlefinger, and all the other venomous serpents were dead and gone, nothing but dusting corpses in unhonored crypts, King’s Landing seemed to attract the worst of the worst, no matter what form they took.

He’d been strange since he returned to them, that was true, but Sansa had no desire to see her little brother harmed. He was quiet, eerie even. She often found him creeping in the shadows with weird expressions and cryptic words that made the fine hairs on her arms stand up, but she knew that was the Three-Eyed Raven, not Bran himself.

No, the Bran she remembered from her childhood was the one that lived in her heart. He was a brave little boy, always climbing and scampering about like the squirrels in the trees outside Winterfell. He had a sweet laugh, especially when tickled in the space underneath his ribs, but an even sweeter smile.

She missed that Bran, though she could not blame him for turning himself into the only weapon he could after his  _ accident  _ left him crippled and paralyzed below the waist. After all, they’d all changed, hadn’t they?

Arya, Sansa thought, had changed the most out of their siblings, which was fitting since Sansa thought she might miss the wild girl the most. They hadn’t been close as children, but years apart had forced Sansa to confront one harsh reality: She had been a raging bitch to her sister as a child. It wasn’t through any fault of Arya’s either.

Sansa had always sneered at the wild little thing her parents dressed up as her sister. She japed about her sister’s face, her mudstained dress, her lacking talents in needlework, to the other ladies that had once lived at Winterfell. It had hurt her sister, she knew, but it had felt right at the time. After all, Septa Mordane condemned Arya’s acts herself.

Her time in King’s Landing revealed which one of the Stark sisters was useful and which was not. While Sansa was stuck in a tower being beaten by knights and pleading for the king’s cruelty to find an end, Arya had made herself into something Sansa still couldn’t even comprehend. She’d fought, again and again, and she’d changed into a creature of myths and legends. Arya Stark, the sister she’d always snarled so meanly at, had become a Faceless Man.

Sansa wondered, not for the first time, if she could’ve become something like Arya had she spent more time play-fighting with her brothers than reciting songs to the ladies that could only respond in pretty pleasantries. She wondered if she would have been a bystanding victim if she’d sparred with her sister, rather than spit on her.

And, now, the Faceless Man was gone. She was sailing West of Westeros, trying to find what, if anything, was left to be discovered. New worlds awaited her. There, she would find new stories, new people, new lives, while Sansa was left behind, waiting to hear any news of her sister’s whereabouts or discoveries.

Sansa blinked as a blur of movement crossed over her vision, causing her to stir out of her despairing thoughts. She turned to find Sandor staring at her with concern in his eyes. “You okay, Little Bird? You drifted off for a moment there.”

“I’m fine,” Sansa replied, though she felt anything but. She gave him a smile that she suspected looked more sad than appeasing. “I just realized how very much I miss my siblings.”

“We can talk about something else, if you’d like,” Sandor suggested as he finally grabbed a leg off the turkey sat before them and took a large bite out of the chunk of meat. “I heard twitterings of a ball going on sometime soon.”

“Oh,” Sansa perked up in excitement at the thought of the upcoming festivities. “Yes, Winterfell will be hosting a ball in a fortnight to celebrate the return of spring.”

Sandor’s brow furrowed in confusion as he leaned forward and wiped the glistening of grease away from his lips with the sleeve of his tunic. “I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

“It’s a  _ Northern _ tradition,” Sansa reminded him with emphasis on the tradition’s origins. “It was started by the Smallfolk, though they celebrated it a little differently, more simply.”

“What do they do?” Sandor asked and gulped down a mouthful of wine.

Sansa felt herself blush. “It’s quite romantic really, or so I’ve always thought.” Her eyes drifted down to her hands, unwilling to meet his eyes with the warm light from the fire flickering over his features. “They give flowers to the ones they love or admire and hold a little gathering with twinkling lanterns and fun diddies to dance along with.”

For a moment, Sansa felt herself transforming back into the young girl who’d believed in pretty songs and craved the favor of a knight. She saw herself dressed in a simple, yet beautiful dress with flowers in her hair and her arms wrapped around an armored one. She imagined herself dancing with a man who protected her and loved her all the same.

Sandor barked out a laugh, interrupting her soft thoughts of what it would be like to join in on the peasant revels rather than the finery of the nobility. “That’s a bunch of fucking shit.”

“I think it’s nice,” Sansa challenged, her eyes feeling as fiery as the crimson locks of her hair. She narrowed her Tully blues into slits and regarded him with an air about her that warned him to consider his next words carefully. “Besides, it doesn’t matter what the Smallfolk do because we have a different celebration.”

“Which is the ball, I take it,” Sandor said.

“Yes.”

“I’m surprised the Little Bird is chirping her pretty head off about finding the perfect dress and getting flowers from every starry-eyed knight,” Sandor japed, though these words sounded mean and barbed with anger.

“I told you I’m not the same girl that I was in King’s Landing, Sandor,” Sansa replied in a low, cold whisper that sounded as if it belonged to something she couldn’t keep leashed. “I don’t fawn over rose petals and golden tresses any longer.”

Truth was, she didn’t fawn over much anymore.

Sandor’s eyes widened in surprise before he sighed and said, “I apologize, Sansa.”

She knew he meant it.

Sansa shrugged. “I know it is hard to reconcile me with the girl you once knew in King’s Landing.” She’d seen firsthand how confusing it was to find the sweet, proper lady of Winterfell replaced by a cold, calculating queen, but she hoped he would get used to it. “Just please don’t assume that I want the same things I did as a stupid girl.”

“What do you want?” Sandor asked, the question coming off his lips so easily she wondered if she’d dreamed it.

She wanted to answer him truthfully. Her chest felt as if it were being ripped in two from how heavily her heart thumped against the skin. The words rose from somewhere deep in her chest, almost clogging up her throat, and rushed over her tongue. She felt them at the tips of her lips, but they never left her mouth.

“I want to rule over my kingdom as best I can,” Sansa replied, knowing that wasn’t the answer either of them had been searching for. “I want to be safe, for once.”

Sandor’s eyes found hers and there was something intent on them as he said, “I’ll never let anyone hurt you again, Sansa.”

She wanted to reach across the table and squeeze his hand within her own. The itch to stitch their fingers together and clasp his hand to her leaping heart felt as if it couldn’t be scratched by just imagining such things, but she kept her hands to herself as she swallowed past the wordy lump in her throat. She couldn’t think of anything to say other than, “I know,” and that seemed to be enough for him, for now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you're enjoying this fic! I have a couple different ideas for it, but I haven't decided exactly where it's going yet, just that Sansa and Sandor WILL get together. That is the only tidbit of information I will give you. Thanks for reading! Y'all are amazing!


	6. Chapter Six

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for canon-typical violence in this chapter.

The day of the celebration where the man who’d once been the Lannister’s most loyal dog would become Sansa’s sworn shield came slower than she expected it to, but it came nonetheless. Her gown had been brought to the castle only two days before, but she still hadn’t had time to see it in person yet. She hadn’t had enough time to oversee the restoration of the glass gardens or the broken towers scattered around the keep, let alone try on a pretty dress.

Yet, the morning of the festivities, she was allowed to sleep until at least an hour after the sun rose when her usual mornings typically began before the moon could completely disappear from the sky. She supposed it was a luxury to spend so much time in her comfortable featherbed surrounded by soft, warm furs, but a pang of guilt came to life in her stomach at being so idle when her people were doubtlessly already going through their morning chores.

Still, when Penna walked through the doors of her chambers and pulled back the thick curtains blocking the light from the windows from shining into Sansa’s eyes, the Queen in the North groaned and covered her face with a nearby pillow, hoping to bar any bright beams of sunlight from keeping knocking the final dredges of sleep from her body.

“My Queen,” Penna said gently as she pried the pillow from Sansa’s hands and tutted at her childish behavior, despite the girl being years younger than Sansa herself, “you have to begin your day soon or the people might think you ill.”

Sansa rolled her eyes under their lids before struggling to sit up. She scraped a hand through her red tresses, feeling more knots than silken locks. The sandy crusts of sleep scratched at the corners of her eyes until she rubbed them away with her pale forearm. “I feel as though I’ve slept far too long and not enough.”

“You look that way, too,” Penna announced with an amused smirk.

Sansa shot her a glare before rolling out of her bed and grimacing at the cold stones beneath her previously warm toes. “I need to get a rug in that spot soon,” she commented under her breath before making her way to the tub full of warm water that Penna had made up just for her. “Thank you for the warm bath.”

Her dressing gown, which was barely more than a slip, fell from her shoulders to the floor in a puddle of shining silk as stretched her arms over her head, trying to work out the kinks in her back from the way she’d slept. It had become an instinct when she’d been a prisoner in the Red Keep to curl up into herself like one of those stupid pillbugs Arya had used to sprinkle in her porridge. It had been a way to protect herself in her sleep, even though she knew it wouldn’t protect her from much. Somehow, it had become a habit for her to sleep with her knees against her chest and her arms around her legs every night, even in a place where she knew she was safe.

When Sansa dipped her toes in the tub, the warmth from the water burned through the ice of the stones and sent shivers of heat licking up her body. She sighed in delight and let herself slip into the bath, letting the water revive her from the hibernation-like sleep she’d just awoken from. Her head fell back against the lip of the tub as she felt the aches from her bad sleeping form being soothed by the comforting liquid.

“I’ll be back with some food for you to break your fast, Your Majesty,” Penna stated after a moment before Sansa heard her footsteps retreating from the chambers.

After a couple moments of relaxation in the tub, Sansa felt the peaceful lull of sleep pulling at her, trying to drag her down beneath its waves. To keep herself awake as she scrubbed a scratchy, herbal soap into her arms so roughly it left red marks, she began to hum one of the old folk songs she’d learned from the many bards in King’s Landing.

As much as she hated her time there, Sansa could look back on some things and remember them as being good, despite coming from a place of evil. The extra lemon cakes Podrick and Tyrion had smuggled her to break her fast after the Red Wedding when she’d refused to eat—eventually, they’d broken her down enough to suffer a few of the sweet treats down—had been the best she’d ever tasted. Dancing with Margaery at one of the many balls had been fun and brought smiles to her face until Joffrey noticed her having a good time and found a way to ruin it. And the bards . . . Well, the bards and their songs had been like the songbirds of the North, a balm to her wounded soul.

Sansa gave up on humming and began singing quietly, as melodically as one of those bards she so often thought of, as the words of _Gentle Mother, Font of Mercy_ fell from her lips the way her Septa had taught her so that she sounded almost like a siren from the legends Margaery had told her about. The lyrics came out of her as prettily as they had when she’d been a young girl, even if her soft-spoken voice had long since disappeared:

_“Gentle Mother, font of mercy,_

_Save our sons from war, we pray._

_Stay the swords and stay the arrows,_

_Let them know a better day.”_

Sansa almost stopped when she heard the creaking of her door open and the sound of light, barely-there footsteps tread across her chamber floor, but Penna had seen all of Sansa’s scars, even the ones she didn’t wear on her skin. She wouldn’t mind her singing.

_“Gentle Mother, strength of women,_

_Help our daughters through this fray._

_Soothe the wrath and tame the fury,_

_Teach us all a kinder way.”_

Sansa heard shuffling behind and she wondered what Penna was doing before she realized she was probably trying to figure out where to place Sansa’s food tray. The desk she kept in her room for late nights when she couldn’t sleep and needed to be doing something was covered with different official paperwork. She thought of calling out to the girl, telling her to just leave it on her nightstand, but she knew Penna was clever. She’d figure it out.

_“Gentle Mother, font of mercy,_

_Save our sons from war, we pray._

_Stay the swords and stay the arrows,_

_Let them know a better way—”_

The last word left Sansa’s throat in a gagged shriek as something thick and itchy was thrown around her throat and tightened until she couldn’t pull air into her lungs. She thrashed in the tub, her legs kicking out around her, while her arms tried to grab and claw at whoever was behind her, trying to choke her to death.

The robe bit into the skin of neck sharply, probably from its rough exterior, but Sansa didn’t care as she reached up to try and pry it away from her throat with her own hands. She couldn’t get a grip on it, however. Her fingers weren’t slim enough to slip beneath the non-existent sliver of air her attacker left between her neck and the rope.

Black dots threatened to overtake her sight and pulsed around her vision in an awkward, blooming dance, becoming larger and larger with every passing second. She shook her head and tried to pull in some air, but the cord blocked it from going to where it needed to go. Her mouth formed the word _please_ over and over again, but she couldn’t get the sound to come out as anything more than a gasp.

Fear like nothing she’d ever felt before flashed across her, singing through her veins, as she realized this was it. She would die here, now. After so many years, so many different tortures, she hadn’t expected this to be her end. Strangled in a bathtub. 

In the Red Keep, pictured herself being executed by Joffrey, her head being stuck on the tip of a spike like her father’s. She’d thought maybe Ramsey would kill her once she bore him an heir, or whenever he finally grew bored of her. Or Myranda could’ve gotten jealous and sent an arrow through the space between her eyes. For months, dreams of the dead murdering her and turning her into one of them had plagued her.

And yet, there was a small bit of relief mingling with her fears. If she was gone, if the fight that had become every single day of her life was over, maybe she’d finally find peace. She’d be with Robb, Rickon, Theon, her mother, her father. There would be no more pain, surely. Only peace.

The fear overpowered the relief, though, when she realized she’d be leaving behind Arya to return to another dead family member. Bran would be able to see her death, over and over again with his powers. Jon would never forgive himself for not staying at Winterfell and being with her. Sandor . . . She imagined he wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he couldn’t protect her, though she didn’t really know that.

As Sansa felt herself going limp, saw the darkness coming for her, the pressure against her throat released and beautiful, sweet air rushed through her body, filling her lungs. She crawled away from where she’d been against the front of the tub. Her body was weak, languid from the sleep that still hadn’t left her and the struggle for her life, but she managed to get as far away from her attacker as possible before turning around to face her savior and the man who’d tried to kill her. 

Her lips parted in a soft gasp as she realized Sandor was standing at the foot of her tub with one of his thick, muscular arms wrapped around the neck of a man Sansa was sure she’d never seen before in her entire life. There was a terrifying rage in Sandor’s eyes, one that reminded her of the beast she’d squeaked at back when she’d been a girl dreaming of knights, but it flew away when he noticed her staring.

“You saved—,” Sansa croaked in a ragged voice as the man fell limply to the floor, looking like nothing more than a lifeless body, and Sandor came barreling over to her, concern written clear across his face.

“Aye, I saved you, Little Bird,” Sandor said as he pushed some of her wet hair back from her pale face. His hand felt warm and good against her cool skin. “I saw the man slip into your chambers, thought maybe it was a servant I hadn’t seen around before, and then I heard the thrashing.” He shook his head and grunted. “Knew it wasn’t good.”

“Well, you were right,” Sansa wanted to say, but the words could quite make it past her lips. She tapped her hands against her throat and shook her head, hoping that would communicate to him that she couldn’t speak, but she was grateful.

“I’ve been choked a couple times, girl.” He reached forward hesitantly before letting his fingers glide against the bruising skin of her neck. She shivered at the intimacy of the touch and ducked her head to hide the blush on her cheeks when she remembered how very naked and wet she was at the moment. “You’ll be sore for a bit, but the pain will go away.”

She nodded, still keeping her head down. His fingers lingered against her skin, rough and calloused, and she wondered what she’d do if they dipped just a little lower to trace a path across her collarbone. What would happen if they rose up to the lower lip she was currently biting into? Gods, she had no clue why he was still touching her or if she wanted him to stop.

“I’m gonna drag this stupid fucker into the dungeons,” Sandor stated after clearing his throat o dispell what would have probably turned into a long, awkward moment and removing his touch from her still-wet, yet beginning to flush skin. “You should get dressed and come down to his cell to listen in on the interrogation.”

Sansa nodded again, wishing he’d go and hoping he’d stay all at the same time.

“You should probably see your maester before going to the cells, though, eh?” He barked out a strangled laugh before hauling the unconscious man over his shoulder roughly. “Wouldn’t want that pretty neck of yours to scar.”

The smile that had almost graced her lips fell as quickly as those words left his lips. One of her dainty hands flew up to the neck in question, tracing the line that had nearly brought her to the Stranger’s door. It was rough, flecked by wrecked skin from the biting strands of the rope. Of course, it would leave a scar. What misery in her life hadn’t?

His words, though, hit something deep inside her, something sad and shallow that she wished had disappeared when she’d stopped believing in knights-in-shining-armor and pretty love stories. It was silly, almost like wishing he’d stayed with her just moments ago, but she couldn’t stop herself from thinking about the ugliness of what her once-porcelain skin had become.

A stupid, superficial part of Sansa wondered what he would think of the scars tracing the story of her life across every part of her people couldn’t see. Her bathwater had hidden those scars from view, warping them to meld into the rest of her ivory skin instead of standing out in haphazard shades of pink and silvery-white, but what if it hadn’t? Would he have been disgusted or understanding because of his own marred face?

Sansa huffed at herself for being such an idiotic child to think of such stupid things when she needed to see a maester and interrogate her attacker. She threw that hoping, dreaming thing some people called a heart back into the cell it had somehow broken free from and prayed that it would just stay put.

Before Sansa could shove those thoughts away and pull herself out of the tub, Penna returned to the room with a tray of what looked like porridge and sweet wine. Sansa watched as the girl’s hands shook and she almost lost her grip on the food tray when her dark eyes landed on the blackening skin on Sansa’s throat. Her eyes shot up to Sansa’s face, a flurry of questions in her gaze, before darting around the room, landing on the puddle of water covering the floor from Sansa’s struggles in the bath.

“What happened, Your Majesty?” Penna asked as she threw the tray on Sansa’s work desk, covering a stack of papers in wine as it sloshed over the edge of its goblet, and raced over to Sansa. “Were you attacked?”

Sansa nodded but waved her hand in a nonchalant way that she hoped would inform Penna that everything was handled. The girl’s eyes followed the movement, but she continued to pepper Sansa with questions as she pulled her from the tub and started to dry her off with a warm, fluffy drying cloth. “Did they try to choke you? Does your throat hurt? Should I get the maester?”

Sansa nodded in earnest at the last question, remembering Sandor’s words about seeing a maester before heading down to the cells. It would kill two birds with one stone if Penna stopped asking her questions long enough to bring the maester to Sansa’s chambers.

Before the girl could leave the room, Sansa’s hand snapped out and wrapped around her wrist, pulling her to a stop. When Penna turned, eyes wide and concerned, Sansa brought a single finger up to her lips, indicating that her attack should remain a secret. Penna nodded. “I won’t tell a single living soul, My Queen. I swear it.”

Sansa nodded and released her.

After Penna left the room, Sansa began readying herself on shaking legs. It was hard to dress herself in one of her plain, yet elaborate dresses, but she managed to do so without falling or injuring herself more. The high necks of her typical gowns covered the bruises already forming on her pale skin, hiding them away from the prying eyes she knew would be waiting for her once she left this room.

Her hair was a different struggle altogether. She was used to Penna doing all of it for her. With no hairdressing skills whatsoever, Sansa ran her brush through her auburn locks a couple times before braiding them back into a single thick plait of wet, silken hair. It wasn’t pretty, not like the little braids she’d once worn to look more like the ladies of the South, but it would have to do until she sat down with Penna in the afternoon to prepare for the celebration later that night.

As Sansa finished the braid, tying it off with a strip of black leather, Penna and the maester burst into her room without announcing themselves, sending a gasp past her lips in shock. She shook her head at her handmaiden for being so ill-mannered and felt a small bit of regret at seeing the way her face wilted from concern to disappointment.

“My lady,” Maester Orwen greeted as he kneeled down next to where she sat on her vanity’s stool and began to pull some things from the bag at his side. “Penna told me you needed me for an injury, but the girl wouldn’t tell me the specifics. How about you explain it?”

Sansa nodded and pulled the collar of her dress down to show him the line where the rope had bit into her skin and left a blackened bruise. “Choked,” Sansa rasped out, though the word sounded more like a croak from a frog. “Rope.”

The maester’s kind, blue eyes widened, but he didn’t say anything or ask any questions. He simply got to work on the looking over the wound. His eyes wandered over the trail of chapped, torn skin, probably noticing the blood threatening to fall from the thinned skin. With grim determination in his eyes, he pulled a little pot out of his bag and opened it, revealing a floral-scented salve that had a purplish tint.

“This ought to keep the skin clean and stop it from hurting so bad.” He rubbed his fingers through the goop and smothered it along Sansa’s neck. The salve sent a chill shivering across her throat, bringing relief to the hot, reddened skin. “I recommend using it twice a day, eh?” He grabbed a swath of white cloth from his bag and tied it around Sansa’s neck. “And let me change the bandage once a day, okay?”

Sansa nodded, already feeling better.

“Your throat probably hurts too much to speak, yes?” Maester Orwen tapped his chin in thought before turning to Penna and saying, “Fetch her some herbal tea, lavender or something, with honey mixed in. It will help.”

Penna scurried away without replying. Maester Orwen departed shortly after that, leaving Sansa alone with her thoughts.

As she waited for Penna and the tea to return, Sansa traced a line over the collar of her dress as she tried to understand her would-be murderer’s motives. She knew she wasn’t well-liked amongst some of the lords, but she couldn’t imagine any of them actually wanting her dead. After all, if she died, Arya was the heir to House Stark, and no one would survive the Brave Wolf’s fury at her sister’s murder.

Perhaps the assassin was retribution for an old, dead enemy. She doubted anyone, save for Myranda, had loved Ramsey enough to avenge him. No one alive loved Cersei, of that she was sure, but there could have been someone out there who loved Littlefinger. _So_ , Sansa contemplated as she leaned back in her armchair, angling her body closer to the roaring fire in the heart, _who loved Littlefinger enough to seek justice for his death?_

She had to admit that no one came to mind, not even SweetRobin who’d been enamored at his step-father for giving him majestic gifts, such as falcons and new weapons he couldn’t wield. One of his whores could have easily admired him, though she suspected their fondness died when his coin stopped peppering them in soft silks and sweet wines.

Sansa snapped out of her thoughts when Penna returned and all-but shoved the cup of hot tea into Sansa’s cold, gloved hands. Steam billowed up from the dark, herbal liquid, warming Sansa’s face like the mist that came from the hot springs outside Winterfell’s walls. She breathed in the warmth, feeling it spread through her lungs and down her body, before taking a long, soothing sip. She almost moaned at the taste, sweet and rich, but took her time drinking it so it could work its magic on her wound.

“Thank you,” Sansa croaked when the cup was drained with nothing but dried leaves at the bottom. Her voice still came out raspy and weak, but it sounded better than the toad-like noises that had been coming out of her before. She stood and smoothed out her skirt as Penna took the cup back and questioned her with only a curious gleam in her eyes. “I’m going to the dungeons for the time being.”

Sansa left before her handmaiden could object and convince her to stay in her chambers. She wouldn’t sit around and do nothing while the man who attacked her was being questioned for his intentions. She needed to know why he wanted her dead. It a burning need, like the one she got when she yearned to finish the paperwork on a trade agreement the North desperately needed after all the wars it had undergone.

She wound her way through the halls, keeping her head down most of the way in the hopes that her people wouldn’t stop her to converse about a variety of things she didn’t have time for. Most stayed out of her way, though some still curtsied and asked for her opinion on a dozen different things, most of which were important decisions she should have been supervising but couldn’t with the situation.

Finally, after half an hour of trekking through the castle, she stepped into the dungeons. The smell hit her almost immediately and her nose wrinkled at the pungent odor of dirty body and human waste. Reforming the dungeons had been on her agenda from the start of her reign, having remembered one night when Ramsey decided to simply leave her in one of the cells with someone else’s stomach contents covering the floor, yet she hadn’t had the time to bring the idea before the Council when there were so many other things the keep needed more.

She found Sandor at the end of the hall, staring into one of the cells with his arms crossed across his chest and his sword hanging at his hip. He turned only slightly at the sound of her footsteps and she thought maybe, possibly, his eyes softened at the sight of her, but the look disappeared almost as soon as it appeared. He nodded towards the man in the cell and said, “Not much of a talker, this one.”

Sansa came to stand next to him and got a good look at her attacker. Before, in her chambers, she’d seen him in a fleeting moment, but she hadn’t had time to let his features sink in, especially when Sandor had been standing behind him, taking up most of her attention. Now, she realized there wasn’t much to the man.

He was skin and bones, literally. The man looked closer to a skeleton than a human, much like the Night King’s army of dead men, yet there was color in his pale cheeks. Blood rose in one spot in particular where the skin was reddened and darkening, probably from one of Sandor’s fists connecting with his cheek. The red in his cheeks was the only reason Sansa even believed he was alive. That, and he moved when she came into view.

When the man saw her, his icy blue eyes narrowed. He raked one of his spindly hands through a rat’s nest of ashy brown hair and shook his head. “What are you doing here, Bolton bitch?” Sandor growled next to her. “I thought you’d be too busy playing with your hair or trying on a new dress to visit the likes of little ole me.”

He had the accent of the smallfolk, but his words weren’t cut short as some of the peasants typically did with theirs. _Strange_. “I wanted to see the man that almost killed me for myself,” Sansa replied, finding strength enough inside her not to let her voice rasp. “I can’t say I’m impressed.”

The man snickered. “Well, right back at you, _Your Grace_.” He spat out her title as if he’d picked up an apple and bit into it only to find it crawling with worms. “Although, I’ve never been impressed with you, so that’s not much of a surprise.”

“Why did you want me dead?” Sansa asked steadily. She forced herself to stand up straight and look him in his cold eyes. “Did someone pay you, hmm? Whatever it is, I’ll double it for the information.” She ran her finger along the line he’d bruised into her throat, despite it being covered by the thick cloth of her gown. “I might even consider not taking your head for your treasonous act.”

He shook his head. “If I told you who paid me, I wouldn’t make it past my execution date, anyhow.”

“Someone _did_ pay you, though.” Sansa frowned at the thought. “Please, just tell me who.”

“Like I said,” he slammed his hands down on the stone flooring that served as his seating and begging, “not going to happen.”

“Fine.” Sansa turned to Sandor and watched him for a moment, wondering if he had the same questions she did. He looked at the man was unhidden disgust, but he kept any words he had to himself. “Sandor, I think this prisoner needs some convincing.”

Sandor’s head whipped around to stare at her for a long moment, too long, before he nodded slightly and said, “Of course, My Queen.”

Sansa left him alone with the man.

She was only halfway out the door when she heard the screaming begin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I pinky promise that the next chapter will be the one where Sandor officially becomes Sansa's sworn shield! There might be some fluffy things, too! We'll just have to see where the day takes me!


	7. Chapter Seven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for a little blood, a little surprise, and a little session of intense handholding.

Sansa tugged at the sleeves of her gown as Penna laced up the back with quick, deft fingers. When she looked in the mirror, Sansa almost felt like smiling when she saw how the deep, royal blue of the velvet fabric brought out the light in her eyes, making the blue seem to glow in the mid-afternoon sunlight. Her hair, braided back into a simple, yet elegant Northern style, glowed a bright, fiery red against the pale skin of her cheeks.

“You look absolutely gorgeous, My Queen,” Penna complimented as she finished tying the dress up and came around to Sansa’s front to adjust the collar of the gown. “I do believe you’ll catch a great many eyes tonight. The lords will be drooling all over you.”

Sansa’s lips fell into the slightest of frowns at the idea, but she forced herself to giggle and return Penna’s words with some lighthearted comment. Although she was sure the Council was hoping for her to make a match tonight, Sansa had sworn not to d ance with anybody, especially not her lords, and had been preparing to make small talk for the past few days, going over all the things she could say again and again in her head.

Her gaze fell upon the mirror once again. She was glad, at least, that she’d somehow had the foresight to have Elyse design a dress with a neck that almost came up to her chin. The blue fabric covered the bruises that had darkened to a blackish blue line around her throat, and she was sure anybody could spot them halfway across the keep. Powder could have covered them up, at least to where nobody would notice them without looking too closely, but Sansa found the stuff itchy and irritating against her skin.

“You should hurry to the grand hall, Your Grace,” Penna suggested as she slipped a loose lock of hair back into place on Sansa’s head. “The ceremony will be starting any minute now.”

“The ceremony cannot start without me,” Sansa replied in an almost-bored voice, but she found herself heading towards the doors anyways. Before she reached the door, Sansa glanced over her shoulder at her loyal handmaiden. “Don’t worry about coming back here to help me undress tonight, Penna. I can do it myself while you spend some well-deserved time off.”

“Thank you, Your Grace,” Penna said in a small voice as a smile lit up her face.

“Have fun tonight, Penna.”

Sansa left the room without so much as another glance at the girl.

As she made her way through the keep, her white cape slid across the stone floors for all eyes to see. More than a couple curious glances turned her way, probably wondering what the Queen in the North was doing with such a ratty piece of fabric attached to her, but nobody questioned her as she held her head up high and continued to walk with her back as straight as a board.

Elyse had tried to clean the cape, that much was obvious when compared to Sansa’s memories of it, but nothing could cure it from the years of neglect she’d forced it to endure. It was a miracle it had held together as long as it had without being washed or properly taken care of, but Sansa hadn’t been able to bring herself to risk it being discovered by her numerous captors. If she’d lost it . . . She wasn’t sure what she would have done to keep the ragged thing in her possession.

When Sansa entered the grand hall, all eyes turned on her in awe. Since becoming queen, she’d become accustomed to the stares that could contain adoration, terror, hate, disgust, or all of those things combined, but she only found wonder in the eyes of her people as she strode down the hall towards the throne where her maester and steward were waiting for her to take her place.

Sandor was nowhere to be seen, but she’d expected as much—one of the Council members had suggested he appear in the hall after Sansa had taken her seat—even if she hated that his face wasn’t the first she saw as she entered the hall. Somehow, looking upon his face made her feel safer than any of the faces of her liege lords.

Sansa inclined her head towards Maester Orwen and Steward Mazin before sliding onto the throne. She let her wrists fall onto the arms of the throne so her hands could clutch the ends where the wood curved into the twin clawed paws of a wolf. Her people rose from their curtsies or bows to look at her with what she could only hope was respect.

Steward Mazin began to raise his hand towards the back walls where the guards were supposed to open the doors for Sandor to enter through, but an arrow embedded itself in his chest, knocking him back into the tapestry he’d been standing in front of. Red spurted from the wound, coloring the ground in a bath of blood.

Sansa let a gasp escape her lips, but nothing more as she found herself staring down the blade of a sword. A couple of shouts erupted from the gathered crowd, but they kept quiet and didn’t start any trouble when a deadly weapon was pointed at their queen. A flash from earlier that day, when she’d nearly been choked to death in her own chambers, slid across her vision, but Sansa blocked it out as she focused her attention on her attacker.

He was a young man, probably around Arya’s age at most, with the plain, dark hair of the North. His eyes weren’t worthy of note, except for the fact that a pure, intense hatred shone in them. It was hatred for her, she was sure of it, but she couldn’t think of a reason why someone would hate her enough to try and kill her in public. Even if he got away with it, he’d surely be tried and executed for the crime.

Earlier that day, Sansa had felt the intense fear that comes with having your life threatened, but the only thing that descended upon her now was an overwhelming calm. She wasn’t sure what had changed since then, but she didn’t feel that rush of fearful relief from when she’d nearly been choked today. Maybe, just maybe, her heart knew that Sandor would come to her rescue before anything truly bad could happen.

“Why don’t you put away the blade?” Sansa asked calmly, feeling the cold, metal tip at the base of her throat. She forced herself to hold his gaze without flinching. “We can talk about your problems like reasonable people, can we not?”

“Ha,” he spat, sending little drops of his own spittle into Sansa’s face. “Like you care about our problems, Bolton bitch.”

Sansa forced herself not to ball her hands into fists at the nickname, not knowing what he’d do if he saw her move even the slightest. “I do care about all of my people’s problems,” she replied in as steady a voice as she could manage, “especially yours.”

He pushed the point of his sword against her throat, stretching her skin almost to the breaking point. “You don’t even know my name.”

“We can rectify that issue very easily.”

He sneered and, in a move so fast she barely even saw it, grabbed her hair in his filthy hands, tugging it up in one swift movement that sent tears stinging into her eyes. “I don’t think so.” 

He leaned down, preparing to whisper something in her ear, but only a wet gurgling sound left his lips as something wet and warm splashed across Sansa’s face and body. His body fell to the side at her feet, his sword collapsing to the ground with a loud, clattering sound.

Arya looked down at her with a raised eyebrow as she slid Needle along her sleeve to wipe it clean of the man’s blood. “What kind of trouble have you been getting into, Big Sister?”

Relief welled up inside of Sansa, ready to explode, as she stood and pulled her sister into a hug. She’d been so worried that her trip to the west of Westeros would bring Arya’s death to her door, but she should’ve known that the Brave Wolf couldn’t be brought down by new lands, not when the Night King himself couldn’t bring her down. There was, of course, the added bonus of Arya saving her life that had Sansa’s so happy, as well.

“You’re here,” Sansa found herself saying as she tightened her grip on her little sister, the only one of her siblings she’d seen in months. “You saved me. You’re here.”

“Yes, I’m here,” Arya said as she awkwardly patted her old sister’s back, clearly impatient with Sansa’s affection. “And, despite what some might think, I still need to breathe.”

Sansa blushed and pulled away, letting her gaze wander of the young woman her sister had become. Not much had changed since they’d parted, though she would have to ask about the new scar bisecting her sister’s dark brow. She still dressed in trousers, like a boy, though her white blouse was tailored in an almost-feminine style with frills around the neck and sleeves.

“We should get rid of the body,” Arya said as soon as she was released. She stared down at the bloody corpse with a wrinkled nose. “Where’s your sworn shield when you need him, eh? He could have been useful in here, you know.”

“My Council thought—,” Sansa frowned as a terrible thought came to her mind. She pushed it away, hoping there was no way it could possibly be true. “My Council thought it would be best for him to wait outside until I arrived.”

“He wasn’t outside when I came in,” Arya replied with twisted brows.

“That’s not right.” Sansa made her way down the hall to the grand doors, which the guards stationed there opened without hesitation once she cast her special glare at them. Nobody stood outside. Not a soul. “He should be right here.”

“Where was the last place you saw him?” Arya asked in a simple, casual tone, though Sansa could see the worry in her eyes.

“In the dungeons,” Sansa answered. “He was interrogating a prisoner.”

“Since when is that your sworn shield’s job?” Arya asked curiously.

“Since the prisoner tried to murder me in my bath this morning.” Sansa felt her sister’s eyes on her as they stormed through the keep, the heels on their boots echoing through the empty halls. “If something’s happened to him because of me, I’ll never forgive myself.”

Arya snorted. “He probably got drunk and forgot about the ceremony.”

Sansa heard the jape, but noted the thinly-veiled concern in her sister’s eyes. She’d almost forgotten how much time Arya and Sandor had spent together on the road, how close they must have become. For her sister’s sake, she hoped he was alright. For her own sake, she knew he had to be. She wasn’t sure how much more loss she could take before the tiny piece of her that felt just stopped working.  “I hope that is the case,” was all Sansa could manage to say as they descended the stone steps into the dungeon.

A chill clung to the air in the dungeon as they made their way down the moist, musty halls. Shivers swept up and down Sansa’s body, causing goosebumps to sprout in all different directions, as she bit the inside of her cheek to keep her teeth from chattering. Septa Mordane had taught her how to do so without looking like she was.  _ Men don’t like chattering teeth and bitten cheeks,  _ Septa had said with an air of pompous authority.

“I’m sure he’s fine, Sansa,” Arya whispered, snapping Sansa out of her revery. She looked down to find Arya staring up at her with wide, concerned eyes, yet there was an inquisitive streak in her gaze that made Sansa put up her guard. “He’s the best warrior I know,” Arya reminded her, “save Ser Brienne, of course.”

“I heard that, you little shit.” Both girls perked up at the lowly growled words and turned the corner towards where the sound had come from to find Sandor sitting against the wall of a cell with his arms crossed over his wide chest. Arya raised a brow at the locked cell door. “Stupid bugger got the jump on me. Hit me over the fucking head. Knocked me out.”

Sansa hurried to unlock the door and ran inside to help him up. When she extended her ungloved hands towards him, he stared at them with skeptical eyes for no longer than a minute before throwing his own paws into them. She hauled him up with a slight groan and forced herself not to tug him into a hug.

“I’m glad you’re okay,” Sansa said quietly as a relieved smile gathered on her features.

Sandor nodded down at her, uncertainty twinkling in his gaze. “Ay, me too.” His eyes flew over her hair and gown, probably noticing the formality of it compared to her everyday gowns. “I was a little late for the ceremony thing, I see.”

“Just a little,” Arya grumbled from behind Sansa. She sidestepped her older sister and landed a punch on Sandor’s arm as she informed him of what happened at the ceremony that didn’t happen. “You missed someone holding a blade to my sister’s throat, you idiot.”

Sansa couldn’t quite tell what the look on Sandor’s face was, but she almost wondered if it was regret or guilt. She tossed those thoughts away, though. After all, he had no reason to feel guilty. If anything, she should be apologizing to him for what happened. He’d been knocked unconscious because of his association with her. Even after becoming a queen, the people she cared for were still in danger.

“I’m so sorry, Sandor,” Sansa finally said after a long moment of nobody saying a word. She wrung her fingers around each other as she tried to find the right words to say. “This happened to you because of me.”

Sandor narrowed his eyes for a moment before bending over to whisper something in Arya’s ear. Arya glared at him before giving him a little nod, just barely a tip of her head, and exiting the cell with a quiet shuffle of her feet, leaving Sansa and Sandor alone.

They stared at each other.

Sansa was unsure what to do.

Sandor seemed to be working up his nerve to say something.

Either way, it was awkward.

Finally, Sandor returned to where they’d found him, sitting against the wall with his legs out in front of him. He patted the stones next to him, gesturing for Sansa to sit. She crossed the cell in two strides and slid down the wall. Her legs automatically found a space beneath her in the primmest position she could manage on the floor of a moldy dungeon.

“You don’t have to apologize to me, Sansa,” Sandor said from beside her as he placed one of his hands over her own. “I chose you, my queen, and anything that happens to me because of that is on me.”

Sansa peered up at him from beneath her red lashes and wondered if he was being honest or simply trying to placate his queen. She knew, however, that it could only be the former. In comparison to all the liars and cheats and bastards she’d ever met, Sandor was the most honest man she knew, even if his words were blunt and brash and coarse.

He would never lie to her.

Sansa turned her hand over and wrapped her fingers around his. As his eyes widened in surprise as the gentle touch, she squeezed and smiled. “I wish everyone were as honest as you, Sandor. Maybe the world would be better if that were the case.”

“Or maybe we’d fight even more shit wars than we already do,” he replied gruffly, but he had a soft look on his face that made something in Sansa’s chest flutter. His hand tightened around hers. “Maybe we would have already destroyed ourselves.”

Sansa knew his scenarios were far more likely than her own, but she still liked to imagine a world where there were no liars. Where her father’s claims of Joffrey’s illegitimacy would have been heard as the truth and her family would still all be alive and happy. Where Jon had seen through the dragon queen’s lies of peace and tranquility for all subjects of Westeros and turned down her alliance. A world without lies would be a different world in all the best ways.

“Swear to be my shield,” Sansa whispered softly, the words escaping past her lips before she could catch them and stuff them back. “Right here, right now.”

“What about your lords and ladies and their fancy ceremony?” Sandor asked with a grunt.

Sansa’s eyes fell to their hands, still entwined. “I never wanted a ceremony or a crowd of people to watch what should have been a private moment between us.” She lifted her gaze to his and found him staring down at her with that same uncertainty from before mingling with something else, something that was too much for her to think of now. “All we have to do is say the vows and you’re my sworn shield. There’s nothing they can do or say about that.”

Before she could say anything else, Sandor stood and helped her to her feet. She expected him to release his grip on her hand and back away, but he only grabbed the other with his empty hand and kneel with both of her hands in his.

“I offer my services, Sansa Stark, Queen in the North. I will shield your back and keep your counsel and give my life for yours if need be.” As she looked down into his earnest, gray eyes, Sansa hoped that day never came, but she blinked back the tears forming in her eyes as he finished his vow. “I swear it by the Old Gods and the New.”

“And I vow that you shall always have a place by my hearth,” Sansa remembered stumbling over these words when Brienne had sworn herself into Sansa’s services, but she’d been practicing them over and over in her head for the past week this time, so they came out as steadily as they were always meant to, “and meat and mead at my table.”

She squeezed Sandor’s hands, both of them, as she brought herself down onto her knees before him, knowing that it wasn’t the proper etiquette for the situation but not caring one bit. She wanted them to be equals in this, not superior and inferior. “And I pledge to ask no service of you that might bring you dishonor. I swear it by the Old Gods and the New.”

As the last words left her lips, Sansa realized how close they were. If she leaned forward just a hair of an inch, their lips would be close enough to touch. She could feel his breath huffing warmth onto her frozen cheeks. For the first time, she noticed there were the smallest, lightest of freckles on his unburned skin. She stumbled upon flecks of silver in his dark gray gaze. She saw everything she wanted and a thousand things she could never have.

“Arise.”

They rose together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! I read all the comments, even if I don't answer them all. If I don't answer, it's mainly because I'm really awkward with praise, so I just say, "Awesome! Thanks!" over and over again. So, I almost didn't do the shield-swearing in this chapter, but then I remembered that I promised it for this one. I hope you guys liked it. I always wanted it to be a little intimate, you know? Also, how do you like our surprise guest star? I'll probably explain why Arya's back and how she knew about the assassination attempt in the next chapter. Until next time, have fun reading!


	8. Chapter Eight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not gonna lie, this is probably a little gibberishy because I wrote this when I was really tired and droopy, but I had thoughts that wouldn't go away. So, if it's bad, let me know. I promise I will go back and fix my incoherent ramblings into something that resembles good writing. If you like this, then maybe I should consider writing more of my college papers when I'm tired and droopy.
> 
> P.S. It's a little short, but short is better than nothing, right? ;-P

Sansa almost cried in contentment when she was _finally_ able to retire for the night after the day’s strenuous events. Her brain pounded against her skull, threatening to break loose, as she laid down and her whole body groaned in relief. All of her limbs were radiating the now well-remembered ache of fatigue, even though she hadn’t done anything particularly exerting, aside from fighting for her life in her bath that morning.

She hadn’t even changed out of her gown or loosened her hair when she pulled her thickest, softest fur across her blanket and buried her face in the nearest feather pillow, relishing in how the silken sheath around the pillow caressed her cheek with its cool touch. In the morning, she’d regret wearing her hair up and keeping her gown on in bed, but she couldn’t think past the darkness already fogging her brain as she started to fall into what was going to be a deep sleep.

But, of course, her rest was interrupted by the familiar groaning of her door. “Who is it?” Sansa called out in a voice that belayed her annoyance with whoever it was. She turned and glanced over her shoulder, squinting a little in the darkness, to find the familiar shape of her sister creeping towards her. “Arya? Why aren’t you in bed?”

Sansa held back her sigh of relief as she watched her sister walk towards her on unsteady, sleepy feet. A part of her had been scared another assassin had come to finish the job, but she knew that wasn’t possible. The Hound had taken it as his personal responsibility to sit outside her door all night just to make sure nothing came through it, even when she protested and told him that any of the other guards could do it.

“I couldn’t sleep,” Arya admitted casually with a shrug of her shoulders as she slipped into Sansa’s bed and tucked her arms underneath her head. “I can outrun my nightmares when I’m awake, but there’s no hiding from them in my sleep.”

Sansa’s irritation drifted away as she turned to face her sister completely and wrapped an arm around her slim, child-sized shoulders. For years, Sansa had found herself unable to keep away the nightmares from her past. Some dreams came to her exactly as they happened, just as cruel and terrible as the real memory, but others were more malicious and worse than anything she’d ever thought her imagination capable of. 

And there was no escaping them.

“It gets better,” Sansa whispered and, gods, how she wished her words were the truth, if only for her little sister’s sake. She wanted to tack on an extra _I promise_ or _I swear it_ , but the lie was great enough on its own that she couldn’t put a solemn vow behind it. “It will get better for you.”

Sansa swore she saw Arya’s eyes narrow as if she’d caught Sansa’s lie like a spider catching a fly in its web. “And you? Has it gotten better for you?”

Sansa huffed a laugh and shook her head. “The bad things that have happened in my life far outweigh any of the good.” She forced a weak smile onto her lips, one that trembled and wavered too easily, even though she knew her sister couldn’t see it. “I’m afraid things will never get better for me, but you might still have a chance.”

They were silent for a long time. Sansa had nothing else to say, and she couldn’t imagine what Arya was wanting to say as the silence stretched on, but, eventually, it died when Arya finally told Sansa her reasons for coming back North when she’d been living out her dream of sailing to the west of Westeros and discovering new lands.

“Bran sent a raven to my ship,” Arya said aloud, driving back the silence. “I don’t even know how he knew it would reach me. I guess that weird Raven thing of his, you know, with the white eyes and such.” She could just imagine Arya rolling her eyes when saying this. “Anyhow, it explained that I was needed back home with you.”

“When I got back to King’s Landing, I rushed up to Bran, had to take out a couple of his guards while doing it ‘cause they thought I was some assassin or something.” Sansa snickered at the thought of her little sister fighting her way through a kingsguard just to kick their brother’s butt. “I asked him what was so important that I needed to come home when I’d barely started my journey. You want to know what that little shit told me?”

“Something cryptic and useless,” Sansa grumbled as she thought of her little brother’s weird behavior since he returned from north of the Wall. He’d tried to explain it to them, in his own way, but whatever he was just wasn’t meant to be understood by them. “He’s fond of such warnings.”

“No, actually, he told me straight-off that you were in danger and needed my help,” Arya replied, sounding put-off by the whole thing. “I asked him why he hadn’t sent someone else to help you or a raven to warn you, but he just said that I was your only hope.”

Sansa let that stew in her brain for a little bit. She understood her brother’s new _personality_ , or she told herself she understood it at the very least, but to not even send a raven telling her about this threat to her life was . . . She didn’t even know what it was. Sure, he’d been right about a lot of things—after all, he’d known they would vote him in as King of Westeros before they even traveled to the summit—but that didn’t give him a right to just decide for himself.

“I wish he’d warned me,” Sansa said after a long while, but her words fell on deaf ears. 

A soft snore from her sister as she curled her little body around one of Sansa’s pillows. Sansa smiled, a small, genuine slip of a thing, at the sight of her warrior sister so at peace. “Sleep well, little wolf,” Sansa whispered, reciting the words her father had once said to her after tucking her into her bed and placing a kiss on her cheek. “Don’t let the rabbits run away.”

Sansa thought it might’ve been easy to fall asleep then. With her sister snoring away like the old times when they’d shared a room together and the soft, silvery light of the moon billowing in through her curtains, it almost seemed like something out of a fairytale, some peaceful dream that Sansa could only dance in for a night before it disappeared forever, but she couldn’t bring herself to close her eyes.

Without waking Arya, Sansa slipped out of the bed with her favorite fur still wrapped around her shoulders. She winced a little as her toes touched down on the cold stones of her floor, but she kept herself composed enough to cross the room without making a single noise, other than the slight hiss she let out when she accidentally bumped into the corner of her writing desk. She was sure the groaning of her door would give her away, but Arya was still fast asleep when she looked back over her shoulder.

Once her door was closed behind her, Sansa cast a glance around to find Sandor sitting in a fragile wooden chair that seemed almost too small for his large frame just a few feet away. His eyes widened when he noticed her standing outside her room, but he didn’t say anything as she tiptoed over to him and curled herself up in a ball on the floor.

She rested her chin on her knees and wrapped her arms around her legs to hold them close to her chest as she looked up at him from beneath long lashes. “I couldn’t sleep,” she admitted in a small, almost child-like voice. “My mind wouldn’t be quiet, I suppose.”

“Aye, that happens to me, too,” Sandor replied in his gruff voice that she wouldn’t admit she loved. “Usually, I just drink myself to sleep, but I don’t think that’s what you have in mind.”

“As much fun as that sounds,” Sansa found herself saying as she tugged her fur tighter around her body, “I don’t think it would be proper for the Queen in the North to become a drunk.”

“Your fucking Northmen wouldn’t like that, eh?” Sandor said with a chuckle as he lifted his wineskin to his lips and took a long, gulping drink from it.

Sansa watched him for a moment before she snatched the skin from his hands and tilted it over her open lips, completely ignoring his protests. Expecting wine, Sansa frowned as the liquid in her mouth tasted of nothing but the purest, cleanest water, like that from the springs in the mountains, and she pulled the skin away. “Is that water?”

“Aye,” Sandor answered as he grabbed the skin from her and tucked back into the waistband of his pants. “I might drink a lot, Little Bird, but I won’t do it when I’m guarding you.”

“Why?” Sansa asked quietly, so quietly that it could have been a whisper on the wind. A part of her hoped he hadn’t heard her question because that small part of her didn’t want to know the answer if it wasn’t what she thought it was.

“I won’t let you die on my watch, Little Bird,” Sandor said after a long moment. He looked down at her and, gods, she swore something glinted in his gaze, something unbearably sad, something like tears. “I wouldn’t survive that.”

Without thinking, she reached up and slid her hand over his. It was inappropriate and stupid and a thousand other words her Septa had said over and over again about situations like this, but Sansa couldn’t find it within herself to care, not when he twisted his hand to lay palm up underneath hers and she curled her fingers around his own and she could’ve sworn their hands fit together like some kind of a puzzle.

It would have been nice to stay like that for an hour or the whole night or the rest of her life, but Sandor jerked his hand away at the heavy sound of boots thudding their way down the hall. Just moments after his hand left hers, leaving hers cold and empty, a soldier turned the corner and stole a glance in their direction. 

The soldier kept walking with that one glance, but he wouldn’t have done so if he’d seen their hands connected. Sansa knew, oh how she knew, that he would’ve stopped, paused, almost as if in wonder before continuing on his route as if nothing had happened, except he’d seen something and the whole castle would have known by morning.

It would be a scandal.

Sansa appreciated Sandor’s smart thinking, his quick reflexes, but her hand wished it was still within his, still warm and safe and protected, even if it meant a scandal on Sansa’s part. She could live with a bad reputation—it’s not as if she hadn’t done so before time and time again—but she wasn’t sure if she could spend her whole life without Sandor’s hand in hers.

Her heart ached at the thought. It was ridiculous and useless, full of the wishful thinking she’d cast out of her mind so long ago that she wasn’t sure how it had returned so fiercely, but she wanted it so badly that she could feel it in every bone in her body, every beat of her heart.

But it wasn’t possible, not in a thousand lifetimes would it ever be possible for the Queen in the North, the cold-hearted queen of ice and snow, the Red Wolf of blood and bone. She was known for many things, for feeding husbands to dogs, for ordering a rumored lover to have his throat slit in what was now her throne room, but never for goodness or sweetness, never for love.

It would be so easy, though, just to tell her Council to go fuck themselves as plainly as Arya and Sandor would and decide one thing for herself. Except, there was always that one tiny thing called a choice. She’d give Sandor one, and he would say no. As much as she hated herself for even thinking that, she knew it was true without a doubt.

Nobody would choose her, not willingly. She was scared and broken, inside and out. Some would think that Sandor wouldn’t care, being scared himself, but he was a man. A good man, to be sure. But, he was a man all the same. Men could be scared and ugly and terrible. They could spit and drink and curse. A woman could be none of those things, ever.

And a queen? A queen could never be soft.

Even if he did willingly choose her, Sansa wondered if that, if being with him, would soften her back into the pretty flower who wore nice gowns and sang lovely songs. She wondered what she’d give for him if he were truly hers and, gods, she would always pay too much. If he was captured, if someone threatened him, she’d give almost anything.

And that wasn’t right.

So, Sansa got to her feet. She forced herself to stride into her room without looking back, even as her heart cracked a thousand times over. At that moment, she made herself swear to guard her heart against him, even though she knew that promise would fall away as if it were ash in the wind the next time she saw him.

When she got back in her bed, Arya was still asleep, wrapped around her pillow like a squirrel around a shaking tree branch. She laid down next to her and imagined her sister’s wiry arms were wrapped around her in comfort as she cried and cried until there were no tears left and she’d finally drifted off into a land of no dreams and no nightmares.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, let me know if this completely sucked. Was Sansa's whole inner monologue over her Sandor issue too much? Also, I told you I'd explain how Arya came to be there and got there so quickly, but I really don't have an explanation for why Bran wouldn't send a warning raven. Eventually, I will think one up, but, for right now, it's just a Three-Eyed Raven thing. Enjoy, like, comment! Thanks for reading!


	9. Chapter Nine

Days passed before Sansa received word from her Council of their suspicions about the attempts on her life. They’d each been sent to their respective lands to find something, anything, to tell her about the apparent resistance building beneath her very nose. As they investigated the threat, Sansa had waited on edge, unaware of if or when they’d strike again.

During that time, she’d managed to keep herself from being left alone with Sandor, thanks to Arya’s constant presence at her side, but she knew that was only a temporary solution to the dilemma of her heart’s madness. After all, her sister couldn’t accompany her everywhere like a mother hen, constantly waiting and watching, but Sandor was sworn to stay by her side and guard her in all aspects of life.

When she’d finally gotten the letters from her Council to announce their upcoming arrival back at the keep, Sansa had breathed her first sigh of relief in what felt like ages. Her eyes briefly skimmed the pages, hoping to glean some more information on what, exactly, they’d each been able to uncover, but no secrets were given away in their neatly crafted words. Nothing told her what to expect upon their return.

“What is it, Little Bird?” Sandor asked from across the room, startling her out of her reading.

Sansa looked up, wide-eyed, and shook her head. “Nothing important,” she replied as she neatly shuffled the papers and stuffed them into her desk drawer. “Just a couple of letters from my Council members.”

One of Arya’s brows rose. “What do those shits have to say?”

Sansa tsked at her sister’s tone and warned, “Careful, Arya. Those  _ shits _ , as you so fondly called them, are the most powerful people in the North, aside from me. It is not wise to insult them.”

Arya snorted. “Who’s going to tell them I said anything? You won’t.” She turned an appraising eye on Sandor and crooked her thumb in his direction. “He’s certainly not going to talk to those pompous asses if he doesn’t have to.”

Sandor glared at her, but Sansa didn’t need any confirmation to know Arya’s words were the truth. Sandor hated most nobility, especially the lords and ladies on her Council. There was no way he’d say anything to them for any reason. It didn’t help much that she’d told him of her suspicions that maybe, possibly, one of her Council members was in on these attacks, that one of her Council members was a traitor to House Stark.

“I won’t say shit to those traitors,” Sandor spat as he collapsed into the chair in the corner of her study with a frustrated huff. “I’ll sooner rip ‘em to shreds and feed the bloody pieces to the hounds. That’ll show ‘em.”

Sansa rolled her eyes, but a sick part of her thrilled at the idea. A chill swept over her, pricking up goose flesh, as she remembered the last time she’d fed somebody to the hounds. His screams echoed in his mind, even now. They had been so perfectly horrid that she hadn’t been able to stop smiling for days upon days after hearing them.

“As much as I appreciate the sentiment, Sandor,” Sansa began as she worked her way through another merchant’s proposal, “I will not convict my Council members, any of them, without a fair trial and a great amount of evidence.”

Sandor grunted, seemingly put-out by the idea of actually letting the law rule the outcome. “Fine, but I’ll bet you it’s that Jorvan Holt.” He shook his head to himself. “I don’t trust that man as far as I can throw him.”

Arya cackled a little and said, “I think it’s Tobin Manderly, myself. He was always an ass when we were kids, remember, Sansa?”

Sansa’s brows creased together as she tried to recall even a moment where she’d encountered a young Tobin Manderly as a child, but nothing came to the forefront of her mind. “No, I can’t say I do. Did we cross paths all that often?”

“Only all the time,” Arya replied in bewilderment before realization crossed her face, “but you were always in some class for proper ladies. Dancing and needlework and such.”

Sansa deflated a little at the reminder of how she’d spent her youth. Constantly preparing to be perfect as someone’s property. Looking back, she regretted it all. If she had the chance, if she could just go back, she’d tell Septa Mordane to take her needles and shove them where the sun doesn’t shine. She’d join her brothers and sister in the wintery sun and learn how to fight like a proper daughter of the North.

“Look at all the good those classes have done for me,” Sansa muttered as she turned her attention back to the paperwork.

“I’d say a lot of good,” Arya said after a while. “You’re the Queen in the North.”

“I could have become the Queen in the North without suffering as much as I did,” Sansa shot back as a surprising amount of rage filled her at Arya’s words. “I could have become Queen without all of that . . . horror.”

She didn’t go around throwing up how many bad things had happened to her all that often—pity wasn’t something she wanted or needed—but she felt something just splinter inside her and she couldn’t stop her anger from spilling out of the cracks. Arya wore an expression of shock, round eyes blown wide and mouth drooping in an o-shape.

“If I knew how to wield a dagger, perhaps I would have been able to fight off my nightmares before they happened,” Sansa said in a voice that shook worse than her hands were. She was trembling like a leaf in the wind, barely hanging onto the thin branch she’d been attached to. “If I hadn’t spent so long dreaming about being a queen in a castle with servants tending to my every need, maybe I would be able to sleep at night without waking up in fear every five seconds.”

“Sansa—,” Arya started, but Sansa was already on her feet, hurrying out of the study to get a breath of fresh air.

She made it all the way to the battlements before she noticed the heavy, thudding footsteps behind her that she knew could only belong to one person: Sandor. She glanced over her shoulder to find him standing a few feet behind her, shuffling from foot-to-foot nervously. “What do you want? I know you’re my sworn shield, but that doesn’t mean you have to follow me everywhere.”

“Just wanted to make sure you were alright,” Sandor answered gruffly, though he didn’t move away after he said it. She waited to hear his footsteps leaving, disappearing like everything else that was ever good in her life, but he didn’t move. After a long while, she heard him take a couple of steps forward until she could feel his warmth against her back. One of his hands found her shoulder and squeezed as he asked in the softest of whispers, “Are you alright?”

Sansa forgot how to breathe.

She wanted to turn around, to be face-to-face with him, but she couldn’t get her feet to cooperate with her brain. Another part of her wanted to lean back against him, to feel his chest against her back. She wondered if he’d wrap his arms around her if she did that. As much as she wanted to daydream about it, she knew he would push her away, gently, of course, but it would still be a push that would break her heart.

Numbly, she remembered he’d asked her a question and she shook her head. She lied to everybody in the keep every single day. They all asked her how she was, and she told all of them that she was fine. She couldn’t lie to him. After all, a dog can sniff out a lie, can’t it? He’d always been able to smell her lies, even when they’d been puffed full of pretty perfumes.

It was quiet again. The kind of quiet that allowed her to listen in on the whistling of the wind as it flew across the evening, sending a chill across the battlements. She felt a shiver run up her back, but Sansa relished in the cold. It reminded her that she was alive, that she had survived, when nothing else in this entire world could.

But Sandor . . . Gods, Sandor saw the shiver, he must have, because he pulled his cloak from his shoulders and wrapped around her, encasing Sansa’s lithe frame in the warm garment. It smelled of him, like pine and something earthy that she couldn’t quite place but adored all the same. She lifted her lips in a small smile but continued to say nothing.

“I have nightmares, too.” Those were words she never thought she’d hear from Sandor’s mouth. She turned to face him, curiosity burning in her gaze, but she found his eyes staring off into the ever-darkening distance. “I just don’t talk about it ‘em.”

“I was angry,” Sansa mumbled as a red blush started to creep up her neck and into her pale cheeks, suddenly embarrassed by her behavior. “Sometimes, I feel like people act as if I never suffered to get where I am.”

“And?”

“And . . . ,” Sansa tasted the word on her mouth and she tried to discover words that could follow it, “And I hate it, Sandor. Gods, I just want to scream.”

“Then do it,” Sandor replied simply with a shrug. Sansa glanced over at him to find a corner of his lips quirked up in a half-smirk. “Just scream out all that hate and anger and fear.”

“Right here?” Sansa asked. She looked out over the battlements, observing her keep and kingdom, and felt that scream threatening to push past her lips. “Everybody in the keep will hear. They’ll think I’m a crazed woman.”

“Who fucking cares? You’re the queen, aren’t you?”

Sansa let his words sink in and felt the need to scream rising with each second.

She pushed it down.

“I can’t,” she protested lowly, her voice reluctant and sad.

He huffed in annoyance. A long silence passed between them before he finally said, “Well, come with me,” and started making his way down the stone staircase leading towards the courtyard.

Sansa watched him descend the stairs before clutching his cloak tighter around her much smaller frame and following him. She had no idea where he would lead her, but she trusted him all the same. After all, he was one of the only people in this godsdamned world she would trust with all of her secrets, all of  _ her _ , even if the thought of telling him all her horrible, ugly secrets utterly terrified her.

Sandor led her into the stables where he saddled his great black stallion, Stranger. When he finished tightening all the straps, he mounted the horse with a heavy grunt, careful of his bad leg, and looked over to her with a strange light in his eyes. He extended his hand from the leather reins and said, “Do you trust me, Little Bird?”

Sansa had already answered this question in her mind a thousand times over.  _ Yes, of course, I do. I’ve never trusted anyone more.  _ Yet, the question gave her pause. For her, admitting trust was almost like admitting defeat or claiming surrender. It was difficult, and she almost couldn’t bring herself to say anything, but she looked into his eyes and found all the stuttering terror in her heart fall away with a simple gleam of that gray gaze. 

“Yes,” she breathed, barely able to make her voice come out above a whisper. She wrapped a leather-clad hand around his forearm and allowed him to pull her up onto his steed. With her chest pressed against his back, she could feel his muscles tighten as he spurred the horse into a run, and,  _ gods _ , she’d be lying if she said it didn’t do things to her. “Always.”

They rode for what could have been hours, but it was no more than a couple of minutes before he slowed Stranger to a stop and dismounted with a slight wince. With a raised brow, he held out his hand towards her. This time, she didn’t even hesitate to take it before reaching out and allowing herself to be gently pulled from the horse.

One of his hands grasped her waist as he helped her dismount, tightening its grip as her feet landed on the soft, white snow covering the ground. She expected him to release her once she was steady and secure on her feet, but he kept that one hand on her waist for longer than was strictly necessary. She knew the wonderful warmth of him would go away the moment she did so, but she still raised her eyes to meet his, to see whatever was clouding his gaze.

As soon as their eyes met, his hand disappeared, leaving behind only a phantom trail of warmth that soon dissipated due to the cold of the evening. He turned his back on her quickly, fast enough to miss the sadness on her face entirely, but he didn’t stay that way for long as he turned in a circle with his arms held out around him in the way only showmen did.

“Go on and scream, Your Highness,” he entreated her with a smirk.

Sansa looked around and realized, for the first time since dismounting Stranger, that they were completely secluded from the rest of society. Wintertown was in the complete opposite direction. She couldn’t even see Winterfell from here. It was quiet and cold and nobody was around for miles as far as she could see. It was perfect.

She could feel that familiar anger that never quite left bubbling underneath the surface of her calm and collected stature. All she had to do was reach for it, pull it, yank it. She just needed to bring it to the surface of what she’d been for the past couple of moments and let it reshape her into the cold, dark creature she’d been when she watched her husband be eaten alive by his own dogs and her would-be suitor get his throat sliced by her little sister. All she had to do was stroke that ugly fire and let it roar into existence once again.

Before she even knew what was happening, she screamed. It was loud and horrible and so unladylike she knew her mother would turn over in her grave if she could see Sansa from wherever she was. She didn’t stop after a few seconds or even a minute. The scream built into itself and grew and grew until she couldn’t even imagine the small clearing had been silent moments before.

It was a scream for her stupid crush as a child being the reason her father was beheaded. It was for her brother’s legs, which he’d never have a use for again. It was for her elder brother, Robb, and his wife and their unborn child who’d never breathe the bittersweet air of the North. It was for her mother. It was for Sansa’s own sake, for the innocence she’d lost so many times over and over again in different and increasingly painful ways. It was for  _ everything _ .

And it only stopped when she was gasping for air and buckling in on herself.

When the last screech left her lips, Sansa felt her knees hit the snow as cold seeped through her black skirt. She felt Sandor as he slowly approached her and wrapped a gentle arm around her trembling back. The warmth of his limbs was welcome against the cold seeping into her legs, but it wasn’t nearly enough after all she’d just given.

Sansa turned and buried her face into his chest as tears slipped down her face. She felt his hesitation as he brought both arms around her and tugged her lithe body closer to his own. Her arms snaked around his waist, tightening their embrace as she gripped the fabric of his tunic in her white-knuckled fists. In his arms, she cried for all the things she’d screamed for and so much more.

When she finally pulled her head away and wiped her running nose on the velvety sleeve of her gown, Sandor smiled down at her in one of his rare, gentle grins that didn't show any teeth but still managed to send her heart into some kind of craze before wiping her tear-soaked cheeks with his own sleeve. "There," he said after a moment in a low voice. "Better now?"

"I think so," Sansa murmured as her eyes dropped to her lap. After the scream and the cry, she felt a sort of peace shift into her. It didn't replace all that anger, nothing ever could, but it gentled it in the same way she'd once prayed for something to gentle Sandor's own rage. "I don't think I'll ever truly be better, but you make me feel almost like I can be."

A blush tinted her cheeks at the admission, but it was the impossible truth. She wondered if this was the moment he'd push her away and tell her that she was being a stupid songbird again. She wondered if this was the moment she broke things between them, making their vows awkward and strange. Yet, neither of those things happened. Instead, Sandor put a finger underneath her chin and tipped it up so their eyes were forced to meet and he nodded.

It wasn't him saying, "Oh, Sansa, I feel the same," but it was an answer nonetheless and she understood the meaning as easily as she understood Arya's love of Needle. It meant something good.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, more angsty stuff, but, I mean, we kind of got a little fluff there at the end, right?


	10. Chapter Ten

By the next morning, Sansa still hadn’t apologized to Arya for her harsh words the night before. She knew her sister hadn’t meant to insinuate that Sansa hadn’t suffered, that she hadn’t been hurt as much as anyone else during their many years about, but the rational part of Sansa had flown out the window when her rage boiled to the surface. She hadn’t been able to stop herself from saying things she didn’t mean and stomping away like a toddler.

When she’d gotten back to her rooms, ready to say sorry to her younger sister, she found Arya had abandoned her post at the foot of Sansa’s bed. The girl had probably found her own bedroom and decided to stay there for the night, rather than face the wrath of an angered Sansa. It reminded her of when they were little and Arya had found sanctuary in their brother’s rooms to keep from listening to her older sister’s chirping.

Sansa knew, however, that Arya wouldn’t pass up a morning of training, so she waited in the courtyard with her daggers attached to her hips, keeping a steady eye focused on the staircase she knew her sister would descend eventually. Sandor stood a couple paces away, inspecting some weapons that had just come out of the forge that morning with a keen eye, even though she knew he wasn’t interested in buying any.

“Do you see anything you like over there?” Sansa asked as she leaned against a nearby wall, still waiting for Arya to make an appearance.

Sandor shrugged without looking up from a rather large sword that Sansa had no hope of ever being able to lift. He hefted the thing as if it were nothing more than a babe. “It’s all fine craftsmanship, I’m sure,” there was a slight hesitation, “but that bastard Baratheon crafted much finer weapons.”

“I would have kept him on here if he didn’t have a keep of his own to tend to,” Sansa replied as a fond smile lifted her lips at the memory of the man that had somehow managed to charm her sister, if only slightly. “He certainly put Arya in a good mood while he was here.”

Sandor’s brows lifted in surprise, though he didn’t seem as shocked as she thought he’d be. “I didn’t know it was him.”

“Hmm?”

“I knew she’d spent the night before the battle with someone,” Sandor replied evenly as he replaced the large blade in his hands and grabbed a shield from the table. “Didn’t know it was the Baratheon boy.”

Sansa’s eyes widened as she realized she’d just gossiped about her little sister without meaning to. She had thought Sandor was aware of Arya’s relationship with Gendry, but why would he be? Sure, they were close, but it’s not like Arya told all her secrets to people she was close with, especially not secrets that would cause a roaring around the lords. After all, Arya was the heir to the North until Sansa could produce a child. It wasn’t appropriate for an heir to a realm to do anything like that before marriage, which she knew wasn’t in the cards for Arya.

“Forget I told you, then,” Sansa said in a hushed whisper as she finally caught onto her sister’s diminutive figure heading down the stone steps. She knew the moment Arya noticed her as the younger girl’s eyes widened and her steps faltered only slightly. She continued to make her way down the steps and into the courtyard, but she steered herself away from the sparring dummies and over to where Sansa stood waiting.

“Sansa, what are you doing out here?” Arya asked, feigning interest when Sansa could see an undercurrent of hurt in her gaze. “Shouldn’t you be writing up reports and such?”

“I thought we could spar,” Sansa offered hopefully. She kicked up a bit of the powdery snow beneath her feet. “In truth, I’ve been missing my usual sessions since Meera’s been away.”

“Ah.” Arya sighed, her eyes falling to the snow Sansa had jostled. “I suppose so.”

Sandor chuckled from beside them. “This I  _ have _ to see. The Little Bird,” his eyes fell on Sansa affectionately, something soft glistening in their grayness, before turning on Arya with what looked to be pride, “and the Brave Wolf.”

“You’ll be watching me lose, Ser,” Sansa said with a bit of bounce in her voice and a blush spreading across her cheeks. “I’m afraid I am nowhere near good enough to even nick Arya, but it’s great practice to fight with such an accomplished sword.”

“I’m not a bloody ser,” Sandor insisted, though his tone was lighter and closer to teasing than it had been the many other times he’d corrected her on such a title. “If you hold your own against the little beast for longer than two minutes, I’ll be impressed.”

Anyone else might have taken his words as a jape, but she knew he spoke the truth. He knew how talented Arya was with her blades, much more talented than Sansa could ever hope to be, and he wouldn’t be disappointed if she didn’t last as long as some other soldiers might. “Well, here’s to hoping I impress you.”

Sansa drew her blades as she turned on her heel to face her sister, whose blades were already in her hands, gleaming in the hazy beams of an early morning sun. In her dress, she was not quite as fast as Arya, but she managed to duck and dodge quick enough to avoid being nicked her arms and legs, which was what Arya mainly aimed for. The fight was more of a dance with two partners that practiced the art of avoiding one another.

“What’s going on with you and the Hound?” Arya hissed quietly as their blades locked together in a tight embrace that neither could break. “You looked a little . . .  _ chummy _ when I joined you.”

“I don’t know what you are talking about,” Sansa said back in just as hushed of a tone. She backed up, breaking the shield of their blades, and tried to send a sweeping slice across Arya’s abdomen. Arya jumped back at the last moment, just as Sansa knew she would. “We were simply talking as a shield and their sworn do.”

“Funny,” Arya snapped as she dropped down into a squat faster than Sansa could follow and sent a kick across Sansa’s ankles, sending her flying crashing onto her backside. She found the tip of blade against her throat as Arya leaned down and whispered, “I never saw you blushing when Brienne talked to you.”

Sansa shoved her sister off of her and started to wipe the dust and snow from the black fabric of her skirt. “Well fought,” she said, completely ignoring her sister’s last words, even as they rang with truth. “We should spar some more before Meera returns from her journeys.”

Arya’s chapped lips parted to answer, but her mouth snapped shut when Sandor came to Sansa’s side and held out a hand to help her to her feet. Sansa gratefully took it and let him pull her up from the cold, hard ground, although she tried to look indifferent about it if only for Arya’s watchful and all-too-intrigued gaze.

“Thank you, Sandor,” Sansa said when she was standing on her own two feet. She released his hand much more quickly than she wanted to, but she knew that was for the best. Holding his hand in the bustling courtyard was decidedly not a good idea. “I appreciate your help.”

“Of course, My Queen,” Sandor replied as he let his hand fall back to his side.

Sansa turned to her sister to find her watching the two of them with narrowed eyes, and she knew she had to distract her from asking a question that Sansa could never hope to be able to answer. “Arya, would you join me on my way to the Council chambers? I wish to speak with you.”

Arya tipped her head in a simple nod before taking Sansa’s arm and following her lead in the direction of the Council chambers. They left Sandor behind in the courtyard, confident that Arya could defend Sansa should she need a protector, although she hoped the meeting wouldn’t go to such extremes.

“I wanted to apologize for last night,” Sansa started to say as she twirled her fingers around one another. “I shouldn’t have—,”

Arya interrupted her with a huffed, “I forgave you as soon as you ran from the room.” She reached out to grasp Sansa’s hand within her own and squeeze. “And I didn’t mean to imply that you’d never suffered to be where you are. I  _ know _ you have.”

Sansa ducked her head gratefully at her sister’s words. “Thank you—,”

“But let’s forget all of that,” Arya said impatiently as she pulled Sansa into a shadowy alcove that most people forgot about until they needed a place to sneak off with a lover or a conspirator. “What’s going on between you and Clegane, huh? Are you bedding him?”

Sansa’s eyes widened in shock. She looked around to see if anyone was passing by before answering, “Absolutely not, Arya. He is simply my sworn shield, nothing more.”

“Mhm,” Arya murmured with a roll of her eyes. She leaned back against the wall behind her and crossed her arms over the leather tunic she wore. “I don’t believe that for a second, you know. You looked at him the way you used to look at pretty knights in storybooks.”

“Pretty knights are only fairy tales in our world,” Sansa replied stiffly as she remembered how that girlish fantasy of hers was one of the reasons her father had been beheaded, how her stupid, childish dreams of marrying a prince were the reasons she had so very little family left. “I was a stupid girl when I looked for happiness in those silly stories.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Arya waved all of that away. “Do you love him?”

Sansa sputtered at the bluntness of the question. “Arya!”

Arya was completely unphased. “Do you?”

In that moment, Sansa decided that faking ignorance wasn’t working. She sighed as she let the charade fall away and thought about the feelings that had been fluttering around her stomach and trying to fly their way to the surface for a while now. “I don’t know what love feels like, Arya. I thought I loved Joffrey and, well, we all saw how that turned out.”

“I think you do,” Arya replied simply as she dragged her sister from the alcove. “You just haven’t been able to admit it to yourself yet.”

They continued their trek to the Council chambers in silence. Arya followed her in, much to the disapproval of some Council members, and stood behind her ornate chair as she took her place at the head of the table. The chamber was quiet, much quieter than usual, but the air felt heavier, somehow, like it held a thousand secrets that nobody could unlock.

“Where is Lady Reed?” Tobin Manderly asked with a frown as his gaze darted between the empty chair the girl in question usually occupied and his queen.

“She has not returned from her father’s keep quite yet,” Sansa answered evenly, having had the answer prepared from the moment she’d received Meera’s raven earlier that morning. “The letter she sent said it could be a few weeks before she is able to return due to her father’s failing health.”

It was a lie, pure and simple, but she couldn’t let them know what Meera was truly up to, not when she didn’t know which of the three she could trust. For once, Sansa found herself thanking the Seven and the Old Gods for Littlefinger’s tutelage. While he’d been a miserable old serpent, he’d taught her one valuable lesson that she could never forget: how to lie and how to do it well.

“I do so hope Lord Reed is doing well,” Elyse Mollen chirped sweetly, as any proper lady would. “He is such a good man and kind lord, from what I hear.”

Jorvan Holt nodded, though he looked less interested in her words than the spot on the wall that his eyes seemed to be glued to. “Yes, yes, well, we should get on with the meeting, shouldn’t we? We’re already starting a few minutes late.”

“Yes, I apologize for my tardiness,” Sansa replied with ease. “My sister and I had a mishap during our sparring match this morning.” Another lie. She couldn’t allow them to know what they’d discussed in the alcove. “I tore my dress and had to change.”

The excuse was enough, although she saw Tobin’s eyes narrow as if he knew that it was a lie. For the rest of the meeting, which preceded as boring as ever, Sansa kept her eyes on Tobin as she tried to figure out what the worst thing he could possibly do was. She tried to imagine what he could get out of trying to assassinate her, as Arya theorized, but she couldn’t think of what he would benefit from it. It wasn’t like he was close to succession, not even remotely, and Sansa was the reason he had such a high position at court in her Council.

There was no way he was the one funding the smallfolk’s little rebellion, she was sure of it, but he seemed to be able to sniff out the lie she’d told earlier. How, though? Had he seen her in her gown earlier and recognized this as the same one? No, she hadn’t seen him before the meeting. Perhaps, he’d somehow stumbled upon the alcove as she and Arya spoke. He could have heard everything they discussed, and that wouldn’t be good at all.

Sansa hardly listened to the reports of her Council members as she waited for the meeting to adjourn, but the reports seemed to grow longer and longer as time passed. Nearly an hour had passed before a messenger entered the room with a scroll in his hands and a blush on his cheeks from the stares suddenly devouring him. He bowed before Sansa and held the scroll out to her with a trembling hand. She thanked him.

The Council watched as she unrolled the scroll and found it to be in Bran’s hand, although she’d already known it was from him because of the wax seal featuring his chosen symbol, a raven in flight. “It’s from my brother, the King of Westeros,” Sansa announced to the room, a reminder that an attempt on her life would bring the wrath of all of Westeros, not just the independent North. “You are all excused while I read this.”

The three left the room, leaving Sansa and Arya behind to read Bran’s message. It wasn’t long by any means, only a couple of lines. The second-to-last line, however, was the one that captured their attention before they even read the rest of it:  _ Pardon our brother, Jon Snow, from his sentence at the Night’s Watch.  _ It was followed by Bran stating how much they’ll need him for what comes next and that only Sansa had the power to pardon him from a king’s judgment.

“Arya,” Sansa said in a state of utter shock, “it appears we need to send a letter to Castle Black.”

“So it seems.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel like this chapter is kind of boring, but I'm posting it anyway because it sets up something super exciting. Also, how great is it that I put out TWO chapters in TWO days? I'm proud of myself. Anywho, it's Spring Break for me and I just felt like writing. Thanks for reading! You guys are awesome!


	11. Chapter Eleven

It was nearly a fortnight before a raven flew into Winterfell with the answer to their inquiry of Jon Snow and his whereabouts. Apparently, the Night’s Watch hadn’t seen or heard from their ex-commander in months. The new commander, a man recruited by Jon himself before he left with the Free Folk, wouldn’t spare the men to go looking for him, but he wrote that he also wouldn’t turn down any of Sansa’s men that wanted to give it a try.

When she read the letter aloud to the people she trusted the most—Arya, Sandor, and the GreatJon—Arya’s face twisted into a frown as she stomped out the room, slamming the door behind her so hard that the frame cracked. A few minutes later, Sansa learned her sister had beaten three sparring partners into the ground. Sansa couldn’t blame her for her aggression, even if it was relieved rather poorly. After all, if nobody knew where Jon was, there was always the chance that Jon just  _ wasn’t _ anymore.

Sansa couldn’t bring herself to think about that, though. If her brother was truly dead, Sansa wasn’t sure if she could handle it. One more honorable dead to add to the growing pile in their family crypts. She couldn't care less if Jon was actually her cousin or not. He was still a brother to her in her heart. Bran had said to pardon Jon, and Sansa had to believe he wouldn’t have sent them on such an errand if all they would find is Jon’s corpse.

“Who will we send to retrieve Snow?” GreatJon asked in his deep, booming voice, breaking Sansa out of her thoughts. Her eyes finally snapped up from the hem of her dress to find the hulking figure of the great lord as he paced around her study. “We should have all of our soldiers here to protect you, My Queen, from these attacks.”

“I’m here to protect the queen,” Sandor growled through clenched teeth, seemingly annoyed by the GreatJon’s lack of faith in his skills. “No harm will come to her.”

Arya, having returned from her sparring session, chimed in, “I agree with the GreatJon.” She sent an apologetic gaze in Sandor’s way. “I know how good you are in a fight, Hound,” Sansa narrowed her eyes at the old moniker, having already told Arya how she felt about it, “but there should be as many soldiers here as possible to protect her. She’s the Stark in Winterfell.”

“You’re a Stark in Winterfell, too, Arya,” Sansa said as she leaned forward, resting her elbows on her desk. She stroked her chin with her nimble fingers as an idea started to form in her head. “When I was crowned, I named you as my successor until I produce an heir, if I ever do.”

Arya frowned. “So?”

“Technically speaking, you are a princess of the North.” Sansa felt no small amount of joy as she watched her sister cringe at her title, but she wasted no time enjoying that feeling as her eyes flew to the GreatJon. “She could rule the North in my stead, could she not?”

“She could,” the GreatJon replied, stopping short in his pacing. “But Her Highness has no experience in leadership, unlike you, My Queen.”

“Besides, I won’t ever need to rule in your stead, Sansa,” Arya reminded all of them.

“If I were to take a trip to the North for dealings with the Night’s Watch, you would.”

“What are you saying, Little Bird?” Sandor asked. His eyes widened almost imperceptibly as he realized he’d said his nickname for her in front of the GreatJon, but the great lord didn’t even seem to notice. “You want to go north of the Wall?”

“It would be the safest move,” Sansa stated, having already thought the plan over a thousand times in her head. “The assassins coming after me are likely not going to be able to follow me past the Wall.” She saw the GreatJon nod out the corner of her eye, showing that he agreed with the plan. “Plus, I need to be there in person to pardon Jon, otherwise he’ll probably kick whatever messenger we send out into the cold.”

“You’re making good points, Sansa,” Arya said after a moment, “but the GreatJon already found the flaw in your plan: I’m not a leader.” Her younger sister shook her head at the idea. “I  _ cannot _ be in charge of ruling the whole North by myself.”

“That’s why you won’t be by yourself,” Sansa replied swiftly, having already thought of this little crisis way before the GreatJon pointed it out. She turned to the towering man himself and let a smile creep onto her face. “GreatJon Umber, would you do me the honor of becoming my Hand?”

“Me?” the GreatJon sputtered before letting out an uproarious laugh. After a moment, he sobered up and looked at her seriously. “You shouldn’t make me the Hand just because it fits into this crazy plan of yours, My Queen.”

“I’m not,” Sansa answered honestly. His eyes narrowed in confusion. “I’ve been thinking about making you my Hand since I returned from King’s Landing to an independent North.”

“Well, I guess I’m the Hand of the Queen then,” GreatJon said.

“It’s settled then.” Sansa stood from behind her desk and started for the door. “After the upcoming festivities, Sandor and I will make our way to the Wall and beyond while Arya stays back here with the GreatJon as her advisor.”

“Just you and your shield, My Queen?” the GreatJon observed carefully. “No extra soldiers or guards?”

“This mission will be best held with stealth, not strength,” Sansa reminded them. “If our assassins have eyes on or in the keep,” she paused at the insinuation of her own people being traitors, hoping that it was not the case, “it’s best that they don’t know where we’re going because of some soldier’s loudmouth.”

With that, she left.

An ache had been forming inside her head since the moment she read the Commander of the Night’s Watch’s letter. It pounded against her skull as if it were something alive and angry, sending pains racing down her temples. All she wanted to do was curl into the covers of her cozy bed and never come back out, but she knew she’d have to wake up in the morning and do all the same things over again.

By the time she made it to her quarters, Sansa’s legs wobbled like a strange dessert she’d seen some Dornish natives enjoy, threatening to give out from underneath her. She barely managed to pull off her gown and corset and throw them into some forgotten corner before falling into her bed. She dragged her cozy furs over her shoulders and buried her face into her feather-stuffed pillows.

When sleep claimed her only moments later, it was filled with darkness and the screams of all the people she’d loved and lost. She watched as her trembling mother was ripped out of her arms, her head pulled from her body, as Joffrey laughed in the corner, cackling like the witches in the stories she used to love. Lady, her beloved direwolf, was skinned before Sansa’s very eyes and roasted over a spit for the king’s soldiers to devour.

Her father’s voice was yelling her name, over and over again, but she couldn’t see him no matter where she looked. She screamed for him, pleading for him to reveal himself, yet he continued to shout for her. When she looked down, her eyes widened in horror as she found her father’s disembodied head at her feet, staring up at her with maggot-eaten eyes.

Rough hands grasped at her shoulders, trying to pull her down, drag her back. She could feel the fabric of her childhood gowns, the ones she’d so fancied on the ladies of the South, being torn from her body, split down her back. She screamed and cried and begged and pleaded, but she was given nothing but laughter and taunting jeers that she couldn’t quite hear but recognized all the same.

“Sansa.” She closed her eyes when they once again fell on her father’s head. “Sansa, wake up.” She felt something warm and soft graze her tear-stained cheeks, beckoning her towards a light at the end of the darkness. “Come on, Little Bird. Just wake up.”

Sansa shot straight up in her bed as she fell from sleep’s clutches, almost smacking her forehead against the man who’d awoken her from one of the worst nightmares she’d had in a while. In the darkness of her rooms, she couldn’t quite see her rescuer, but she would know the earthy pine smell coming from him anywhere.

“Sandor,” Sansa whimpered as she fell forward into his open arms, crying against his chest. Her hands twisted into knots around his shirt as she felt a heavy sob building inside her throat, threatening to break free. “It was so horrible.”

“Hush, Little Bird,” Sandor murmured as he ran his hands through her loose, sleep-mussed hair, carefully picking his way through the different knots he found. “It’s going to be alright. It was just a nightmare, that’s all.”

“No, it wasn’t.”

He didn’t have to ask what she meant. 

“I know,” his embrace tightened around her, “but those things that happened are behind you.”

“Are they?” Sansa shrugged away from him to look him in the eyes, having already adjusted to the darkness surrounding them. “I can’t—,” she choked down another burst of tears that tried to make their way past her lips, “I can’t get rid of the memories, Sandor. They won’t leave me.”

He didn’t say anything.

He didn’t have to.

All he had to do was wrap her in his arms again and say that everything was going to be okay and Sansa would believe him. She’d know deep, deep down that he was only lying to make her feel better, but she’d still believe him with every piece of her heart. It was one of the things she loved the most about him, that her trust in him was never accompanied by that same fear and suspicion that had always clouded her feigned-trust in people like Cersei and Littlefinger. It was a genuine thing that she couldn’t stop thanking the New and Old Gods for.

When he hugged her again, Sansa leaned into it and wrapped her arms around his middle, letting him wholly engulf her into himself. She only flinched slightly when one of his hands slid too low on her back, grazing one of the many scars that littered her once-porcelain skin. He must’ve felt her little jolt because his hands flew back up to that little space between her shoulder blades, sweeping soothing strokes along that plain.

After what could have been minutes or hours, he started to release her and stand, probably to make his way back to his room now that she’d been comforted back into a sense of calm, but Sansa grabbed his hand. “Don’t go.” She found herself pleading, even knowing that it was against propriety’s sake. “Please.”

“I shouldn’t stay,” he answered gruffly, letting loose a rough chuckle. “An old, ugly dog like me sniffing around the queen wouldn’t look good to your lords and ladies.”

“Nothing I ever do looks good to them,” Sansa replied in a tired voice. She reached out and grabbed his hand before he could get too far out of her reach. “Maybe I should do something that’s good for me.” She squeezed his hand gently within her own. “Just stay with me until I fall asleep. You make me feel safe.”

“Fine,” Sandor huffed. He pulled his hand out from hers long enough to grab a chair he found nearby and drag it over to the bed. A great sigh fell from his lips as he dropped into the seat and said, “Will this do, Your Majesty?”

“Well enough,” Sansa answered tiredly as she reached out, seeking his hand. Reluctantly, he held it out and let her latch onto it with little resistance. A small smile lifted on her lips, one that she knew he couldn’t see in the dark, as a sort of contentment rolled over her. “Thank you, Sandor.”

“Go to sleep, Little Bird,” Sandor whispered as he tightened his hold on her small hand. “I’ll be right here.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Woot! Another chapter down! I'm probably going to be writing a little bit more than recently because my spring break has been extended. Yeah, apparently, people are freaking out about this whole coronavirus enough that my university has given us an extra week of break AND moved all of our classes online for the rest of the semester. Anywho, I guess I have more time to procrastinate and do nothing now, so I should be writing a little bit more. Thanks for reading! I love all kinds of feedback, so let me know what you think!


	12. Chapter Twelve

When dawn broke through the curtains covering her windows, Sansa dazedly awoke from sleep’s gentle embrace and tried to roll onto her side to bury her face in her favorite fur pillow, but she found something weighing her arm down so completely that she couldn’t move without stretching it past the breaking point. Reluctantly, she opened her eyes to the morning and found a sleeping Sandor Clegane’s chest laying across her arm, effectively holding it in place against the silken sheets of her bed.

A line of drool slipped past his lips, falling on her upper arm, but she couldn’t find it in herself to care as she studied him in the most peaceful position she’d ever found him in. The fingers of her free hand twitched with the desire to card through his ebony hair. She wanted to know if it was as soft as it looked to her, but she pushed back the idea to even try it, knowing that even a featherlight touch could wake a trained warrior such as him.

Much to her amusement, she noticed how he kept his sword belt on at night and his hand had drifted to the hilt in his sleep. She wondered if he always did so or if it was simply because he was watching over her. Maybe he’d tugged on the belt when he’d heard her screams, thinking she was being attacked. Her heart warmed to the heat of the sun when she thought of how he’d awoken her and held her through the aftereffects of her evermore common nightmares.

Sansa laid there watching him until her bedroom door opened with a loud creak and slammed into the stone wall, effectively waking him from his seemingly peaceful sleep. She turned an accusatory glare in the direction of the perpetrator, noting Penna’s wide-eyed stare as she noticed the man in Sansa’s room. Her attention immediately fell back to her shield, however, as he sat up slowly with a groan and scrubbed a hand over his face, wiping the sleep from his eyes.

“Where am I—,” Sandor started to ask before he looked around and his eyes widened. “Shit!” he barked as he swiped an arm across his drool-covered chin and backed away from Sansa’s bed, nearly tripping over the chair he’d dragged over to it. He turned to find Penna staring directly at him. No other words left his lips as he stomped out of the room, not even bothering to look back at his charge before slamming the door.

“What was that?” Penna asked before Sansa could ever manage to collect herself.

“ _ That  _ was a very confusing man,” Sansa replied as she stood from her bed and joined Penna at the small table she’d had moved to her room for her to break her fast at. She picked at the jam-covered bread and drank down a single gulp of milk before proclaiming herself not hungry and pushing the food away from herself.

Penna hummed to herself at her mistress' lack of hunger. “Aren’t you going to tell me why he was in your room, Your Grace?”

“I had a nightmare,” Sansa explained, wincing as she saw the concern on her handmaiden’s face. “He must’ve heard from his room and come to see if I was alright.”

“Seeing if you’re alright and sleeping almost all the way on your bed are two completely different things,” Penna pointed out as she pulled Sansa’s dress for the day out of her wardrobe. “How did he come to sleep in your room?”

Sansa shrugged. “I asked him to stay until I fell asleep,” she admitted in a small voice, remembering her moment of weakness. “He must’ve fallen asleep.”

“Why?”

Sansa frowned at the question as she dragged a brush through her long locks. “I guess he was tired.”

“No, not that,” Penna asked as she took the brush from Sansa’s hands and started to style her red hair. “Why did you ask him to stay until you fell asleep?”

“He made me feel safe.”

It was that simple. Despite how scared she had once been of the Hound, he was one of the only refuges from the things that haunted her. Every night, she had nightmares about her past, but not a single horrible specter from her past had come to her with him so close by last night. It was about so much more than his vow to protect her, too. It was just about him. There was something about him that made him specially equipped to keep the bad things away. He was like her own personal shield to save her from what she wished she could forget.

“You are smitten,” Penna stated as she finished the small, wispy braids she was working on and tucked Sansa’s crown atop her head. “Absolutely smitten.”

“Maybe I am,” Sansa admitted, feeling a small blush rise in her cheeks, “but nothing will ever come of it. I’m not meant to be someone’s love.”

“Don’t say that,” Penna admonished as she helped her into the gown Sansa had chosen for the spring festivities. “Any man would be lucky to have you.”

“I hear what the smallfolk say, Penna.”

Penna rolled her eyes. “You shouldn’t take the whispers of cursings seriously, especially when they come from old hags with nothing to do but make up stories.”

“Every man I’ve ever kissed is now dead,” Sansa stated plainly. “Two of them by my own hand.”

“That doesn’t mean you’re cursed.”

“It means something that I couldn’t find happiness in either of my marriages.”

“You can’t blame yourself for not finding marriage with the Imp and that Bolton Bastard,” Penna argued as she expertly tied the white laces of Sansa’s gown, “nobody else should either.”

“I blame myself for a lot of things, Penna,” Sansa replied softly as she tugged at the long, tulip-shaped sleeves of her gown, “but neither of those things is one of them.”

“Good,” Penna said with a pat on her shoulder, “now look in the mirror and see how beautiful you are.”

Upon seeing her reflection, Sansa commended herself for having the dress done in the pastel blue of the sky she’d chosen so many weeks past. It brought out the brightness in her blue eyes, making them seem to twinkle as she twirled a lock of red hair around her fingers. The dress itself wasn’t anything special, except for the fact that it didn’t cover the pale skin of her neck. Its neckline dipped down low, showing off the tops of her breasts. Near her collarbone, she saw the ending of a pink, rippling scar. She reached down to grab the cream she knew would cover it when her door opened after a single knock.

Sansa turned in shock to find Sandor standing in the doorway, his eyes glowing with surprise and something that she’d seen in the eyes of men a thousand times but hadn’t seen in his for a long, long time. She forced herself to stand incredibly still as he trailed his gaze across her body, starting at the hem of her skirt to the tip-top of her head, but he frowned after a moment when his eyes trailed back to her collarbone.

She reached up with one hand, mortified to find the still uncovered scar peeking through the neckline of her gown. Turning away from his gaze, she smeared the cream she found across the scar and asked, “What is it, Ser Clegane?”

“Here to escort you to Winter Town for the festivities, Your Grace,” he said after a long moment of silence. Sansa frowned as she realized he hadn’t even said anything about her calling him by a title. “Are you ready to leave?”

“Of course,” Sansa chirped as she grabbed the soft, fur-trimmed cloak she made specifically to pair with this gown and threw it around her shoulders, sheathing herself in white.

The walk across the keep’s grounds was awkward at best. Sandor made sure to keep his distance, walking at least five feet behind her at all times, and didn’t attempt to strike up a conversation, even after Sansa tried to start one up by commenting on the beauty of the day. Before she could stop herself, she started wondering whether it was her scar that had brought him to this unpleasant level of propriety or the fact that he’d fallen asleep in her chambers.

After they were about halfway to the winter town, he broke the silence by asking, “Where’d you get that scar?” She looked up at him with wide eyes, surprised by his sudden question. He tapped a finger against his chest in the same spot her own scar was now hidden. “The one just there.”

Despite herself, her hands tightened on her reins as she explained, “I disappointed Ramsey, somehow.” She shook her head as she tried to remember the tale behind the scar, but there had been so many punishments from Ramsey that almost all of them had lost any meaning to her. “I can’t even remember how I came to receive that one.”

“That one?” He questioned in a carefully guarded voice. She peeked over at him to find his lips clenched into a straight line of distaste. “What do you mean by that?”

“There are more,” she replied in a calm, measured voice, even though her mind drifted to all the little white lines dotting the landscape of her body, reminding her of the horror she’d endured. “I don’t like to showcase them.”

Silence followed her declaration.

Again, she glanced over at him to find him staring at her with a strange mixture of sympathy and rage in his gaze, both emotions trying to fight for dominance. Eventually, he shook off the rage and spit it into the grass. “I’d kill that bastard if you hadn’t already fed him to the hounds.”

“I know,” she whispered as she reached across the distance between them and covered his trembling hand with her own. His eyes locked on hers and any lingering rage left almost instantly as he twisted his hand beneath her own so their fingers could lock together. “I know, Sandor.”

As they neared the winter town, Sansa found herself reluctant to release his hand, but she did so when she finally saw the first outline of a person on the outskirts of the village. Without his hand covering her own, the warmth dissipated, leaving only a cold tingling behind. She rubbed her hands together and wished she’d worn gloves in spite of the warmth of the day.

A crowd was already gathered in the town square as Sansa approached and dismounted from her horse. She handed her off to a nearby stableboy and joined the crowd as they began their celebrations of spring. They all looked beyond pleased to see her, probably because she was breaking tradition to be with them for their festivities.

While most of the past Wardens of North had disregarded the peasant festival conducted to bring in the spring, her father had always enjoyed walking amongst the smallfolk and celebrating with them before spending his evening at the ball held at Winterfell. When Sansa became queen, she vowed to do the same as a way to honor her father’s memory.

She watched on the outskirts as children ran around in circles and plucked still-blooming flowers from the thawing ground. Womenfolk chatted with other womenfolk as they began gathering their separately prepared meals from their homes. Men boasted to each other while sipping on horns of ale or home-brewed winterberry wine. Somewhere out of eyesight, a bard played a tune Sansa didn’t recognize, but she hummed along to it all the same.

Her eyes focused on one little girl in particular as she raced across the green grass, her mousy brown hair flying freely behind her. All the boys trailed behind her as she swiftly avoided capture in a game of what Sansa thought might have been pretending to be pirates. She deftly managed to escape their grasps more than once before picking up a stick to fight her way past them.

She giggled a little, catching Sandor’s attention. The whole time she’d been watching and observing, he’d been standing beside her as stoic as stone with a flask of water in his hands. Now, he watched her with marked interest before tipping his head to the little girl she’d been observing. “Whenever there’s talk of heirs, you always say, ‘If I ever have one,’ but you looked at that one like you’d actually like one.”

“It’s not the children I don’t want,” Sansa remarked not unkindly but quite pointedly. She leveled her gaze on him. “I’m not sure I ever want to get married again. If you haven’t already guessed, the first two times were spectacular failures.”

He chuckled as he lifted his flask and took a long sip. “Third time’s a charm.”

“The Council will want me to marry a lord,” Sansa explained. When her eyes crept over to him, he was watching her as if her words were the most important he’d ever heard. “I can’t marry another man I do not love, Sandor, and I certainly won’t marry one that doesn’t love me in return.”

“That shouldn’t be too hard,” Sandor replied with ease in his tone, but she noticed the way his hands twitched as if he were trying to keep them from clenching into fists. “Every man that looks upon you loves you.”

And she couldn’t help it.

She thought of him and wondered if he was speaking from personal experience. She knew that there were men who would kill for her beauty, that many men had lusted upon her in King’s Landing when she’d been a young, soft girl, easy to mold into their liking. Was Sandor one of the men that looked upon her and fell instantly in love? It would be so amazing to just think he was, but she knew the truth in her heart.

_ No,  _ she answered for herself.  _ He was not. _

“Not every man.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one feels kind of short, but it's setting up for the spring ball! We might get some dancing thrown in with a teensy tiny bit of jealousy. Anywho, tell me what you think, what you like, what you don't like, what you want to happen. I love hearing from you guys! Thanks for reading!


	13. Chapter Thirteen

It was late in the evening when Sansa and Sandor made it back to Winterfell to find the ball almost ready to begin without the Queen herself. She didn’t even have time to change before the GreatJon found her dismounting her white mare in the courtyard and began ushering her into the Great Hall, despite the dirt clinging to the hem of her icy blue dress and the wreck the wind had managed to make her hair. She found, however, that this was to her advantage when she finally entered the ballroom.

Sansa knew the moment everybody noticed her entering the room from the feeling of a thousand eyes falling on her figure as she strode to the banquet table meant for her and her party. It was a familiar feeling to her, to be watched so closely, but she couldn’t help the panicky anxiety that rose up in her chest whenever it happened. A symptom of Joffrey parading her before his court before having her beaten by his oh-so-valiant knights.

While the panic stopped when she found her seat and was able to look out onto the crowd to find the familiar faces of her people, the eyes did not stop. Most only contained an adoration or respect for the Queen in the North, but she noticed there were a great many that simply looked her up and down as if she were the tastiest veal steak they had ever seen and they were starving. 

_All single lords of prosperous houses,_ she noted.

Sandor grumbled behind her, causing her to turn to see what had him so annoyed already. She found him staring out into the crowd, observing the faces staring up at them. “I told you they all fall in love with you with a single glance,” he grunted, but his face looked nothing like the smugly satisfied grin that most people had whenever they said  _ I told you so _ . “All the lads are staring at you as if they’d never seen a woman before.”

“All of them want to be the King in the North,” Sansa replied in a short tone. She already knew what men wanted when they looked at her like that. It had nothing to do with her beauty or her personality. They only wanted her power, the titles she could give them, not her. Never her. “None of them want to be Sansa Stark’s husband.”

Beside her, the GreatJon’s eyes held a spark of understanding, but Sandor’s brow only twisted in confusion as he asked, “Is there a difference?”

“To me, yes.” She looked out over the crowd again, knowing that her dance card would be full for the night, not that the dancing would be any fun. It would be them all schmoozing her to try and get her to notice them enough to begin a courtship. “To them, no.”

As everybody began their dinner before the bards arrived, Sansa tried to tame her wild mass of red locks into something presentable, despite the fact that she knew none of the men in this room cared what her head looked like. Her fingers threaded through her locks swiftly as she plaited it into a plain braid that was better than nothing, even if some of the copper strands were already slipping from it.

“Where’s your brat of a sister?” Sandor asked after a moment.

Sansa looked around the room, noticing for the first time that Arya was, in fact, not present at the ball. With a barely noticeable sigh, she said, “Probably off somewhere with that blade of hers. She hates balls, you know.”

“She hates most lady things,” Sandor replied.

“That is very true.” Sansa glanced over her shoulder at him, but it only made her realize that nobody had given him a meal like the rest of them. She gestured to the empty seat next to her that she was sure had been meant for Arya. “Sit, now.”

Slowly, he shoved himself away from the wall he had been leaning against and sunk into the chair beside her, looking as if he were about to crush the chair underneath his large frame. His eyes darted around the room cautiously as Sansa slid her own meal in front of him, which only made his eyes widen even more.

“Sansa,” he whispered so lowly that only she could make it out, “I’m not meant to sit with you.”

“In my court, you can sit wherever you like, Sandor,” Sansa replied, uncaring about the propriety of it all. After all, what had propriety ever done for her? She placed her hand over his, not even bothering to check and see if anyone was watching, and urged him to take a bite from the plate. “Please, sit, eat, enjoy yourself. You deserve it.”

When her hand left his, he started to chomp down his meal as quickly as a wolf would a sheep. She couldn’t imagine how hungry he was, knowing that he hadn’t let his guard down even a moment to eat at the smallfolk festival they attended earlier that day. After taking a long sip out of her goblet, sighing at the refreshingly sweet, yet sour wine that slid down her throat, she handed him the drink. She knew he preferred wine with his dinners.

He started to open his mouth, probably to say thank you, when a young lord approached the table and bowed so deeply he could have touched the floor if he only let his arms drop away from his sides. When he stood upright, Sansa realized he was Mortimus Hornwood, a young lord still waiting for his father to die before he could inherit the family keep.

His cheeks were chubby, full of child fat that never fully left, signaling how very young he was. He could be no more than ten and six, which wasn’t too young for someone her age, but still too young for her to be interested in him. His eyes sparkled as he stared up at her with that same lust-filled gaze she was beginning to recognize as something she should stay away from. “My Queen, may I be the first to claim you for a dance?”

She blushed deeply as she hadn’t even realized the music had started to play. For a moment, she wanted to glance over at Sandor, hoping that he would sweep her off her feet for the first dance, but she knew it wouldn’t happen. As she shook that fantasy out of her mind, she plastered a bright smile onto her face and said, “Of course, Lord Hornwood.”

Sansa danced with Lord Hornwood and another lord after him and another after that lord and another and so on and so forth. None of them were particularly entertaining. They spoke of the weather and of trade. Some ventured to talk about the Whitewalkers and the bravery with which they fought, but Sansa shut them down almost immediately, not wanting to relive one of the scariest things that had ever happened to her.

Her eyes were constantly seeking out Sandor in the room, but she only found him a few times. Each time, their gazes caught on each other’s, but she couldn’t be sure what passed between her stare and his. She felt gooseflesh prick up along her arms every time the exchange happened, but she only saw brief flashes of annoyance on his face each time she broke away from their little stares, no matter how much she wished she could stare into his eyes for hours.

It was when she was switching partners again, promising that this would be the last dance of the night for her, that Sansa saw Sandor standing in a corner of the Great Hall with a serving girl. The brown-haired girl was too close for propriety’s sake, but Sandor wasn’t making any effort to push her back the couple of feet Sansa would have found appropriate. No, he was laughing at something she had said and taking short sips of wine Sansa’s goblet. And that was all it took.

Something inside of Sansa snapped in half as if it were a rope that had been pulled to two opposite sides too tightly and it finally gave way. She found herself blinking back tears if only to keep herself from looking like a fool in front of her lords. A stinging sadness rose up inside of her but it was coupled with some other emotions that were almost too strong and dizzying for her to name, like anger and humiliation.

She watched incredulously as the girl ran her hand down the length of his arm, tracing the muscles with her work-worn fingers. She found herself unable to tear her eyes away from the scene unfolding before her until the lord she was dancing with cried out in pain and suddenly stopped whatever dance they’d been in the middle of. A rush of heat crept up into her cheeks when she realized she’d been so wrapped up in watching Sandor and his serving wench that she’d stepped on this lord’s toes.

“I am so sorry, Lord Marsh,” Sansa exclaimed as she wrapped her arm around his elbow and led him to the great table where she and the GreatJon had shared their meal. “Let me call for Maester Orwen to tend to your poor foot.”

As she rushed from the room, she noticed Sandor’s eyes watching her make her exit, but she couldn’t find it within herself to care. He could just go back to his scullery maid while she found the maester by herself. She didn’t need him to pretend to be concerned for her well-being when it was evident there was something else he was far more interested in. It would feel too much like pity if he cast aside the serving girl to watch her. It was clear to Sansa that he found only one of them attractive, and that one wasn’t her.

Sansa felt a groan start to grow from her when she heard familiarly heavy footsteps coming from the direction of the Great Hall. Reluctantly, she turned to find him steadily catching up to her, the black cape he wore fluttering in the wind behind him. With her arms crossed over her chest, she shook her head and snapped, “I don’t need your help for this, Clegane. Just go back to your scullery maid.”

He slowly came to a stop right before her, hesitation and confusion flitting across his features. “What are you chirping on about?” Noticing the shiver that wracked through her from the cold night air, he pulled off his cloak and draped it around her shoulders. “You’ll catch your death out here, Little Bird.”

She wanted to take the cloak off and throw it in his face, but she couldn’t bring herself to do that when she found it smelled so intensely of him and his comforting scent that brought her to the forests with its pine and earthy aroma. And, gods, the warmth of his body lingered in the cloak’s fur lining, enveloping her shivering form in his own heat. She wondered, briefly, if the cloak was only mimicking how his body would feel wrapped around her own—

Her eyes snapped wide open at that last thought. She shook her head to clear it of the lustful thoughts his stupid piece of clothing was bringing to the forefront of her mind. As much as she wanted to, she couldn’t imagine herself with another woman’s man. She took off the cloak and threw it at him, just as she had thought to do first, and grumbled, “Give that to your scullery maid, not me,” before storming away from him.

“Why do you keep saying that?” he asked past clenched teeth. He caught up with her quickly, even though she was going as fast as her legs could carry her without running. “What scullery maid are you talking about?”

“The one who had her hands all over you in the Great Hall,” Sansa snapped as she felt his large hands tugging at her elbow, trying to get her to stop. “I’m sure whatever-her-name-is will appreciate it a hell of a lot more than I will.”

That was a rotten lie.

Nobody could appreciate that cloak as much as she had in the five seconds it was wrapped around her.

But he didn’t have to know that.

It was only after the words left her lips that she noticed the confusion spreading across Sandor’s face was quickly being replaced by amusement. Both corners of his lips twitched as mirth twinkled in his gray eyes. Again, he wrapped his cloak around her, noticing another shiver wrack across her small frame, and he said, “Little Bird, I don’t even fucking know what that girl’s name is.”

Sansa’s breath left her lips in a short puff that sounded like an, “Oh.”

He nodded. “Just trying to make conversation with her, even if she was simple as they come.”

Her brows knit together in confusion at that. He was under no obligation to converse with anyone in the keep, especially not if he didn’t want to. “Why?”

At that, Sandor sighed and ran a hand through his hair, lifting the thick locks that usually covered most of his scarring, before letting it fall back against his face. “Your lords think I’m a Lannister dog. I was trying to prove I wasn’t.”

“You don’t have to prove anything to them, Sandor,” Sansa said as she reached out and placed a hand on his shoulder and gently squeezed as reassuringly as she could. “You have already proven yourself to me a thousand times over and that is all that I care about.”

He opened his mouth to argue. “I just—,”

“No more,” Sansa commanded softly with another squeeze to his shoulder. “Let’s just forget this all happened, okay?” She smiled when he nodded in agreement. “Good, now, we have to get the maester to Lord Marsh.”

She started to turn and walk away, happy to have him at her side once again, when he caught her hand within his own and made her turn back to him. They stayed like that for longer than she thought was proper or appropriate, but she couldn’t bring herself to pull away when he was looking down at her like she was actually the most important thing in the world to him.

A question must have appeared in her eyes because he shook his head and said, “I just, ahem,” he coughed into his hand, although it sounded more like he was roughly clearing his throat, “wanted to know why you didn’t look like you were enjoying your dances.”

Sansa’s mouth twitched into what could be considered a half-smile, but it was reluctant and resigned. “None of them were with the man I wanted, I guess.”

“Oh, I thought I was going to have to beat some cunts up for touching you wrong,” Sandor grumbled under his breath, but she heard him nonetheless and felt her heart pick up at the thought of him beating up a gaggle of lords just for touching her. 

“No, it was nothing like that,” Sansa assured him, even though her mind was processing the fact that her hand was still clutched within his own.

Sandor nodded almost absentmindedly like he hadn’t even heard her.

She started to wonder if she should turn away again, but he stopped her with words that stilled her rapidly beating heart. “I know I’m not the handsome lord you wanted to dance with,” he hesitated as if the words tasted foreign in his mouth, “but I would be pleased to dance with you, Little Bird.”

Sansa wondered if the blush in her cheeks would ever go away when she delicately tipped her chin and said, “That would be wonderful, Sandor.”

The hands already locked together rose in the air while his large, empty hand fell to her waist. She gripped his shoulder with her own empty hand as they began spinning to the song of the wind. There was no beat with which to step, no melody, but she found that she didn’t care at all when she could feel the heat of his chest so close to her own.

It was then that she wanted to tell him all the things she felt for him. She wanted him to know that he was one of the only men in the world that she trusted with her whole heart. She wanted him to know that she woke up wishing to see his face before anyone else’s. She wanted him to know that her rare good dreams almost always featured him. She wanted him to know a thousand things that she could never bring herself to say aloud.

Sansa kept her mouth closed, though, because she didn’t want to run the risk of ruining whatever this was between them. If she admitted to having feelings for him, feelings that he couldn’t return, she wasn’t sure how she would ever be able to move on from it. She knew she would, eventually, because she had survived far worse than a broken heart, but that didn’t mean she wanted her heart to break just yet.

They danced for what felt like hours under the star-shining sky without saying a word.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know this is becoming a super slowwww burn, but I gave you guys some fluff to help with the burn. Thanks for reading!


	14. Chapter Fourteen

The next morning, their dance was still stuck in Sansa’s mind. She couldn’t push it away, even whilst she was supposed to be paying attention to the last Council meeting she would be involved in before leaving for north of the Wall. Although, it was probably for the best that her mind wasn’t on the meeting because she still hadn’t figured out how to tell the lords and lady—Meera was still away on her secret mission—of the Council that she was going to be gone for an indefinite amount of time.

By the time the Council meeting came to an end, Sansa had decided to just let the GreatJon and Arya tell them whatever they wished about her departure. They knew enough about her suspicions of the Council’s intentions not to reveal where her true destination lay. As far as she was concerned, they could say she was taking an impromptu trip to Dorne to speak about a trading alliance or some other lie that would placate the Council members until she returned.

“I believe that is all on the docket for today’s meeting,” Sansa began as she started to rise from her high-backed chair, but she stopped cold when she saw the looks passing between the Council members, “unless there is something else you have to discuss with me.”

Elyse straightened her back and said, “Well, there is something we have been meaning to speak to you about for some time now.”

“I’m all ears,” Sansa replied, wondering what could be so important.

They all shared a worrying glance, which told her this was not going to be news she wanted to hear, before Jorvan finally snapped his gaze to hers. “We think it is high time Your Grace started the search for a husband.”

Sansa froze. She had known, of course, that this would happen eventually. Being the Queen in the North came with many benefits, but being free to be unwed was not one of them. There would always be the need for an heir to the throne of the North. She couldn’t let that responsibility fall to Arya, not when she knew her sister would never be happy as a wedded mother. All the maesters suspected Bran could never have children of his own. Jon . . . Well, Jon would never be an option in the eyes of the Council because of the innate madness of the Targaryen blood running through his veins. The job of continuing the Stark line fell on Sansa alone.

Still, his blunt words shocked her. “I’m sorry, I don’t believe I heard you correctly,” Sansa sputtered, knowing that she probably looked wide-eyed and terrified. “You want me to do what?”

Tobin spoke next, although he looked like he would rather do anything else. “We believe Your Majesty should begin the search for a husband. The North needs a Stark heir for the security of the realm.”

Elyse nodded, though Sansa could see the wariness in her eyes. She wasn’t as onboard with this as the two men were. “It would be for the best, Your Grace.”

“I knew this would happen eventually,” Sansa said with a scoff that was almost too quiet for them to hear. “I just hoped I would have more time.”

“It will have to be a man with no hope of inheriting his own lands,” Elyse stated.

“He shall take your name,” Tobin added helpfully.

Jorvan stayed quiet.

“I will take your suggestions under consideration,” Sansa said with a kind nod to them, even though she felt nausea rising up within her, burning the inside of her throat. “For now, let’s adjourn for the evening. There is some work I must do before I retire for the night.”

At that, Elyse and Tobin both stood and left, not before bowing to their queen. Only one had what could be described as sympathy on her face. Feeling sick to her stomach, Sansa stood from her seat before realizing that Jorvan was still in the room, watching her with a look that made the sickness in her stomach spread throughout her entire body.

“There is something I wanted to discuss with you, Your Majesty,” Jorvan announced as he came around the side of the table.

“Of course.” Despite her unease, Sansa plastered a grin across her face, but it fell away almost immediately. “What can I help you with?”

“If it suits Your Grace, I would like to propose myself as a suitor,” Jorvan offered as his eyes raked over her form in a way he had never once looked at her before. Sansa felt the need to squirm, but she remained standing as tall and straight as her lady mother would have. “I could fulfill all of Your Majesty’s needs.”

“I’m sure you would be an excellent suitor, Jorvan,” Sansa replied as politely as she could manage, even if she felt like gritting her teeth as the words left her lips. “However, I would like some more time to process all of this before I make any decisions.”

Like a hound, Jorvan sniffed out the lie. His face hardened almost instantly, his eyes narrowing into a glare that ran chills up and down her spine. “Let me be very clear,  _ Your Majesty _ ,” he spat out her title as if it were sour, “being your husband will be an embarrassment to any man because of how  _ roughly  _ you were broken-in.”

Heat coursed into Sansa’s face, causing her cheeks to bloom a bright red, but it wasn’t from shame or humiliation as this man was hoping. Fury rose in her as vividly as the blush on her cheeks. She felt as if she could strangle the man before her with her bare hands, but she knew that his words would never be a valid excuse for his murder, no matter how tempted she was to watch the life drain from his eyes.

“Let  _ me _ be clear, Lord Holt,” Sansa took a step forward and bared her teeth as if she were truly a wolf, “you will never speak to me about that again,  _ ever _ .”

Jorvan stepped even closer to her and leaned down so their faces were only inches apart. “I am the only man that will not be shamed by your  _ reputation— _ ,”

The sharp smack of Sansa’s hand against his cheek stopped the rest of his sentence from leaving his wormy lips. Her hand stung from the slap, but seeing his cheek reddening was enough to make the pain more than worth it. He stumbled back a couple of steps until he bumped against the round table they used for their Council meetings as his hand raised to caress his cheek.

“Your services will no longer be needed on my Council,” Sansa spat at him, making sure not to rein in any of her spittle so a few drops splattered across his face. “If I see your face in Winterfell after this night, I will feed you to my hounds, just as I did my husband.”

With that, Sansa turned on her heel and stormed out of the room, letting the doors slam behind her as she left. As she all-but ran through the halls, she heard the heavy, thudding footsteps of Sandor following closely behind. She wasn’t sure if he’d heard anything from where he stood outside the Council’s meeting chambers, but he had probably already guessed that there was something wrong with her because he followed her into her rooms once they arrived at her quarters and closed the door behind the two of them.

“Are you alright?” Sandor asked as Sansa started pacing the room at an infuriated speed. She didn’t even slow down a bit. “What happened in the meeting, Little Bird?”

She huffed. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

Sandor grabbed her elbow, forcing her to a sudden stop. “What has you so upset?”

“Lord Holt is not to be allowed within the gates of Winterfell again,” Sansa stated sharply, ignoring his question. “Tell the guards. Make sure he is escorted out by nightfall.”

“What did he do?” There was a long stretch of silence before what sounded more like a growl than a question left Sandor’s lips. “Did he touch you?”

Sansa took a deep breath. “He offered himself as my future husband.”

Another long silence. “And?”

“He said some other things I don’t wish to discuss.”

“I’ll take care of it,” he grumbled, but she could see the barely restrained anger in his eyes. “Just relax and begin preparing for our journey to the north.” After that, he left her alone with her thoughts.

Only after he was gone did she finally admit to herself that she wanted to tell him what happened, but she worried about what he would do if he heard what Jorvan had said. He would tear the man from limb-to-limb and, as much as she wanted to see that, she didn’t know what the lords would say about it.

There was the marriage issue, too. She couldn’t even wrap her mind around the thought of marrying another man, let alone the fact that there was only one man she could see herself standing before the heart tree with. There were so few men in this world that she cared for, let alone trusted, and she refused to join herself to yet another lord who wanted her for her power and name only.

She shook the thoughts from her head when she noticed dusk was falling. Only a few hours were left before she and Sandor were supposed to depart from Winterfell for their journey north of the Wall. Quickly, she packed her things and began her wait for the cover of darkness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's shorter than usual, but this chapter is mainly setting up the Sansa and Sandor's trip, which I'm really excited about. Thanks for reading!


	15. Chapter Fifteen

Their plan was to separately make their way to the stables, but Sansa was having trouble getting past the door to her chambers. Two guards had been posted outside her door, although she couldn’t remember putting in an order for them to do so. She could hear the metallic creaking of their armor every time they moved, but she waited and waited for what felt like an hour and never heard them walk away.

She couldn’t leave with them outside her door. If she left with them watching, feigning the need to grab some wine or some food from the kitchens, they would be expecting her back in her chambers in less than an hour. The plan she had put together relied on them having a whole night of hard riding before anyone even noticed they were gone. Asking them to leave, though, would seem suspicious. After all, what kind of queen would turn down personal guards after two assassination attempts?

Sansa waited inside her chambers for nearly two hours before she heard the two men give a shout and fall to the ground with heavy, clanking thuds. Her door slammed open only seconds later with a large figure taking up the whole entrance, blocking any of the candlelight from the hallway behind and hiding the fallen guards from sight.

Sandor shot a quick glance over his shoulder before he said, “Alright, Little Bird, we need to get goin’ before those two wake up.”

“We’ll have to ride faster,” Sansa blurted as she grabbed the bag she’d stuffed full of things she hoped would be useful beyond the wall. As they made their way into the hall, she cast a concerned glance down at the two guards, but she didn’t stop to check and see if they were alright. “As soon as they wake to find me missing, they’ll sound the alarm.”

“I could kill ‘em.”

“No!” Sansa gasped in outrage.

“That was jape,” Sandor squeezed her shoulder comfortingly before sending her a half-smile that was almost cheerful, but Sansa could see the corners of his lips twitch, giving away his nerves.

Sansa nodded, knowing that he felt the same anxiety-ridden pit in his stomach as she felt in hers. His hand fell away from her shoulder, but she felt it hovering around in the air behind her back, ready to push against her spine to guide her in the right direction, if need be. It was a small comfort that made her heart stop beating so crazily for a moment.

They made it to the stables without getting stopped, but that had only been the easy part. Somehow, they needed to make it past the guards on the walls without them noticing or caring that the Queen in the North was riding out of Winterfell’s gates in the midst of the night. With the recognizable color of her hair and the fame of her face, Sansa knew that getting past the guards would be the hardest task they had to overcome.

Before mounting her horse, she took her cloak out of her bag and draped it over her shoulders before pulling up the hood to cover her Tully-toned locks. The braid she’d deftly knitted her hair into would hopefully keep any stray hairs from falling into her face and slipping out of the hood, but that only took care of half of the problem.

As they rode up to the gates, Sansa kept her head bowed down so low none of the men could distinguish her face. Her chin was resting against her chest, creating an ache in her neck from how crooked it was, hiding her face away from the men. She prayed to the old gods and the new that the men could only see her chin, maybe her lips, and nothing more. Her anxiety only lasted until the gates lifted seconds after they approached them. 

After rushing out of Winterfell, they rode hard until the moon fell and the sun rose. Even then, they only slowed the pace of their mounts only slightly because of Sansa’s aching body at their harsh ride. She hadn’t ridden a horse for such a long period of time in her whole life. The longest had been during the shorter stretches on her first journey to King’s Landing when she’d grown tired of the carriage and wished to ride alongside Joffrey so she could listen to him speak about himself and his own accomplishments.

Sansa looked back on her childhood self with pity, wondering what she could have possibly seen in such a monster, but she knew why she had fallen so far for the young prince. In her eyes, he had been everything the songs were made of because of his golden hair and regal bearing, but that was before everything came to pass. It was before Lady was killed in Nymeria’s place. Before Joffrey promised her father’s amnesty and sentenced him to death. Before he had her stripped and beaten in front of his court. Before everything.

“What are you thinking about, Little Bird?” Sandor asked, suddenly breaking her out of her thoughts.

Sansa shook her head. “Nothing, why?”

“Your face got all scrunched up,” Sandor said and attempted to scrunch his face like her own by wrinkling his nose and furrowing his brows, “like you’d smelled something bad.”

Sansa felt a smile pushing against the firm line of her lips until, finally, his imitation of her made her let out a little chuckle. “If you must know, I was thinking about the first time I made the journey to King’s Landing.”

Sandor was quiet for a moment before he said, “Oh, aye?”

“Aye,” Sansa mocked, though she sent him a smile to show it was done in kindness. “I was remembering how I’d wanted to ride just so I could be near Joffrey. I was a fool.”

“You were a child.”

“I was old enough to be betrothed to the next king,” Sansa argued.

“Still a child.”

“Do you remember the journey to King’s Landing that time?” Sansa asked as she remembered his presence, knowing he had followed them every step of the journey, always listening to Joffrey and watching as she giggled and batted her eyes.

“Aye, I remember you thinking that cunt, Joffrey, shit gold,” Sandor replied with a sardonic twist of his lips. “You looked at him like he was your Florian.”

Sansa sighed. “I thought he was.”

“That stupid shithead never deserved it.”

“No, he didn’t,” Sansa agreed as she turned to face him fully and saw something that almost looked like jealousy on his face, but she didn’t dare hope for him to feel such a thing about her. “Do you ever wish you could go back?”

“Fuck no,” Sandor spat as he looked at her with wide, unbelieving eyes. “I’d never go back to working for that shit-stain of a family.”

“No, not like that.” Sansa’s head tilted to the side as she tried to think of a different way to phrase what was on her mind. “Do you ever wish you could go back to before everything went bad? Like, before you became Joffrey’s shield?”

“No,” he answered gruffly.

“No?” Sansa repeated in confusion. “Why not? You hated him.”

“Shielding him led me to where I am now,” Sandor explained evenly. He didn’t elaborate as to where he was now, whether he meant sober or shielding her or living in the North or none of those things. “I wouldn’t trade that for the world, even if I could go back.”

“I would,” Sansa remarked casually. He turned to her with raised brows, prompting her to explain. “I would go back to the day Robert Baratheon rode into Winterfell and I would tell that stupid drunkard to go back to his shithole of a city and leave us be.”

“You wouldn’t have become Queen in the North then.”

“I would have my family,” Sansa pointed out.

“We wouldn’t have—,” Sandor stopped almost abruptly, but he took in a deep breath and forced himself to meet his eyes as he said, “We wouldn’t have met.”

“Of course we would have,” Sansa objected as she flung out her hand to squeeze his forearm from across the short distance between them. “I would force you to talk to me until you decided that you would rather stay in the North than return to the South with the royals.”

“You would be too scared of me,” Sandor mumbled under his breath, eyes downcast. “You always were at that age.”

“Your anger scared me,” Sansa admitted quietly as she remembered all the times he’d snipped and snarled at her. “I grew up loved and cared for and praised. I wasn’t used to such anger being directed towards me.”

Sandor’s lips twisted into a wry frown. “My ugly mug probably didn’t help—,”

Sansa stopped him before he could say another word. “I didn’t give a damn about your scars, Sandor.” She slipped her hand down from his forearm onto his clenched fist, feeling it slacken underneath her touch. He watched her intently as if he were cataloging every move into his memory. “I have never cared about your scars.”

“You’d be the first person to not care about them,” he grunted in his usual less-than-enthused tone of voice, but he didn’t pull his hand away. “Most people take a look at me and think I’m some kind of monster.”

“Those people are idiots,” Sansa whispered as she laced her fingers through his, “and I’ll fight them all for your honor.”

Sandor laughed, a full, hearty laugh that made her stomach twist around itself. He flashed her a smile that could have lit up the whole world before saying, “You’d duel for me?”

She wanted to tell him that she’d do anything for him, but she stopped herself short of embarrassment. “You would do the same for me, wouldn't you?”

His face softened into something close to content as he squeezed her hand and said, “Of course, Little Bird.”

“I don’t think many men would do that for me,” Sansa whispered as she thought back to Jorvan’s words about her being broken. “My virtue has been tossed into the mud too many times to count. There would be no honor to fight for.”

“That’s shit,” Sandor spat, his face hardening into a mask of anger that no longer scared her. She had seen far worse than his rage. “Whatever those bastards did to you has nothing to do with your honor.”

 _Now,_ Sansa thought, _would be the perfect time to tell him about what Jorvan said._ Yet, when she opened her mouth, she couldn’t bring herself to say those words aloud because it would mean saying all the things she feared he would eventually start to believe. She trusted him, she did, but men always had a way of proving her wrong, didn’t they? She had loved Joffrey, and he’d repaid her with her father’s head. She had trusted Petyr, and he’d married her to Ramsay. She had wanted to believe Ramsay could be a good man, and he’d done his best to destroy her every day until she escaped.

Sansa settled for a whispered, “I know," and nothing more.


	16. Chapter Sixteen

During the journey to the Wall, Sansa was mostly silent. She had a thousand different things rolling around in her head that she had yet to find a way to voice. A part of her wanted to talk to Sandor about what her Council had said. She wanted to tell him that she was supposed to find a husband, but she couldn’t bring herself to say the words. Every time she even thought about opening her mouth, some kind of fear gripped her and told her to slam it shut. And so she did.

It the last night of their journey before they would reach the Wall and, once again, Sansa felt those words bubbling up in her chest, threatening to crawl up her throat, but she shoved them back down once again as she sipped at the rabbit stew Sandor had carefully cooked over a flickering fire. It was good, she had to admit. She couldn’t imagine where he’d found the carrots and other vegetables to complement the chicken-like meat.

“Where did you learn to cook like this?” Sansa asked before taking another sip of the stew.

Sandor grunted as he filled his bowl for the third time and said, “I had one of the cooks in the Red Keep teach me.”

Sansa felt curiosity creep up on her at his answer. Men didn’t usually learn how to cook, especially by choice. “Why?”

“That way I’d know how.”

Sansa rolled her eyes at his words. “Obviously, but why would you want to know how?”

“I didn’t much fancy the idea of starving when I was old enough to retire from guarding,” Sandor replied in a tone that was barely above a grumble. “ _ If _ I even grew old enough to retire,” he added halfheartedly. “I certainly hadn’t hoped I would back then.”

“Wouldn’t your wife cook for you then?” Sansa asked, even if she hated how women were expected to slave over food for their husbands.

He huffed a self-deprecating laugh and said, “No woman wants a scarred old mutt like me to be their lord husband, Little Bird.” He shook his head as he cleaned his bowl out with some water and wrapped it up in some cloth. “I resigned myself to that a long time ago.”

Sansa’s heart ached at whoever had made him think that no woman would ever want to marry him because of his scars or any other part of him. She wanted to rage at the women that had made him resigned to a fate so sad and lonely. Gods, she felt like yelling and screaming and crying for him all at once, but she tamped all that down and said, “That’s nonsense, Sandor.”

His one good brow raised. “Is it?”

“Yes,” she replied so sharply that there was no room for argument on his part. “I think any woman should count themselves lucky to have you as their lord husband. I know—,” Sansa cut herself off before she could finish what she’d been about to say.  _ I know I would.  _ Those four words would have ruined her. “I know it,” she finished in a lackluster tone.

He narrowed his eyes at her, but he said nothing to argue. Instead, he took her finished bowl and cleaned it for her as she sighed and hid in her tent before she could say anything she couldn’t take back.

It was early to be preparing to sleep, but Sansa knew if she spoke to him for even another five minutes, she would ruin every single thing between them. She heard him settling in for the night as she pulled off her gown and burrowed underneath the furs of her bedding, finding warmth beneath them.

Her eyes closed almost instantly as sleep claimed her, but she found nothing peaceful on the other side of the waking world. Dreams of cruel grins and thinly-veiled threats pursued her through the night until she could see the only set of eyes in the world she had ever truly been afraid of.

While she had always been scared of Joffrey and Cersei and Meryn Trant and all those other bullies, their eyes had not brought to her knees in fear. They had not made her flinch and flail and scream and cry.

Only Ramsay’s eyes had ever done that.

They were cold and cruel and tinged with a crazed madness that made her shiver each time she looked into them.

She tried to remind herself that he was dead, that the hounds had eaten everything they could, including those icy eyes of his, but her mind kept bringing that gaze of his back to the forefront of her mind as his voice whispered what he was going to do to her. She could feel the imprint of his hands on her body, feel how cold and dead they felt against her own warm skin.

He was right in front of her, but she’d shut her eyes. He was coaxing her to open them, telling her that he’d pry them out of her pretty face if she didn’t, but she couldn’t bring herself to do so, not when she knew she would be looking right into those eyes.

Hands tore at her clothes, her skin, her hair, ripping every protective layer from her body until she looked like the figure on the Bolton flags, red and flayed, but still her eyes remained closed. She screamed and cried and thrashed and jerked, but he held her steady in his cold, dead grip, chastising her for being such a bad girl.

“Open your eyes, Sansa,” he whispered in her ear right before he tore it from her head.

“Open your eyes, Sansa,” he murmured at her neck before he bit in and tore off a chunk of her flesh, just as his hounds had done to him.

“Open your eyes, Sansa,” he shouted as he started shaking her, his hands at her shoulders, but this time was different. His voice was frantic and scared. His hands on her shoulders felt almost safe and warm. It didn’t feel like Ramsay at all.

“C’mon, just open your eyes, Little Bird,” was the last thing Sansa heard before she opened her eyes and sat up with a gasp.

She flailed around for a second before realizing the man sitting next to her, holding her shoulders, had warm, calloused hands and the grayest eyes she had ever seen. There was nothing cold about him, nothing cruel. He watched her with something that could have been fear flitting across his gaze for a long moment before he hauled her into his chest and wrapped his arms around her shivering body.

“Gods, you scared me, Little Bird,” he murmured into her hair as his hands massaged circles into her back. “I couldn’t wake you up for a moment there.”

“I’m sorry,” Sansa mumbled as she realized her heart was still pounding against her ribs as if it were trying to break free from its cage.

“Don’t be sorry,” Sandor said as he tightened his hold around her. “We all get bad dreams, remember?” 

She thought back to that night when he’d taken her out into the Wolfswood to scream away her anger, how he’d admitted to having nightmares he never spoke of, and she wondered what his were. He probably wouldn’t tell her about them if she asked, but she found a sort of comfort in knowing that she wasn’t the only one with a repertoire of sleepless nights under her belt.

“I dreamt of Ramsay,” Sansa said suddenly, shocking even herself by the confession. She expected him to say something, to tell her that was all behind her, but he simply watched her as if he were waiting for something. “I dreamt he was peeling off my skin, flaying me alive, and he kept telling me to open my eyes, but I couldn’t because I would have to look at him and I just—,” She cut herself off as she shook her head, trying to will the tears building in her eyes away. “Gods, I just couldn’t look into those eyes.”

Sandor nodded and continued to hold her, no questions asked. It was at that moment that he could have asked her about her relationship with Ramsay. He could have questioned her about what happened, about all the times he hurt her, but he didn’t say anything. He just kept his arms around her as she sniffled into his thin undershirt.

“I don’t think there’s a chance of me falling back to sleep anytime tonight,” Sansa admitted as she finally pulled away from him and wiped her nose on the sleeve of her shift.  _ Real queenly,  _ Sansa thought to herself. “Perhaps we could just continue our journey, if you don’t mind, that is.”

“No, Little Bird,” Sandor replied as he pushed some of her hair away from her wet cheeks. “I don’t mind.”

He left the tent then, but she heard him outside gathering up their supplies, rolling up his own tent and readying the horses. In the time that he did so, she barely managed to pull her gown over her body and lace it up. Her hands shook so badly that she’d almost had the thought of asking him for help, but she couldn’t bring herself to be any more of a burden to him than she already was.

By the time they set out, the sun was just barely cresting over the rolling hills, making the melting snow sparkle against the grass. Her eyes were still red and puffy, but she sat tall and proud in her saddle, just as her father had taught her, uncaring about how much of a mess she must look. 

The rest of their journey to the wall took until around the time they would usually have their midday meal, but Sansa had opted out of both breaking her fast and eating at midday. She didn’t miss the concerned looks Sandor shot her at that, but she simply smiled limply and told him her stomach was unsettled.

Castle Black was just as she remembered from the time she spent there, if a little more battered, but when she rode through the gates, she found no familiar faces underneath those dark cloaks. She had to remind herself there was no Jon or Davos or Eddison Tollett. Some of the men had been here the last time, but most of the old Night’s Watch was dead, killed in the Battle of Winterfell by those creatures.

Sansa shivered at the memory of those living corpses, how they’d just popped into being inside the crypt the defenseless people had been hiding in. She glanced over at Sandor from the corner of her eye, wondering if he was remembering the same as she, but his face was scrunched into what could only be described as something feral. He was practically growling at the men as they watched her approach.

“Why, it’s the Queen in the North,” exclaimed one gentleman whom she was certain had been at Castle Black the last time she’d been there, though she knew she had never met the man. His face split into a bright smile as the black fur of his cloak rustled in the icy breeze. “We wasn’t expecting you, Your Majesty. I would’ve made the men clean themselves up some more.”

This was the Lord Commander, she was sure of it. She remembered Jon telling her about the man when they were traveling back from King’s Landing after his sentencing. He’d told her the man was a bastard, like him, but he hadn’t grown up in a keep like Jon. Still, he told her that the man had a jovial nature and the blondest hair a Northerner could get, which she now saw was not an exaggeration. This man’s hair was almost as blonde as Brienne’s.

Sansa dismounted from her mare with the help of Sandor and greeted the man with a warm smile of her own. “This was meant as a surprise, Lord Commander Snow. I am pleased to make your acquaintance.”

“Pleasure’s mine,” the man said as he waved away her pleasantries, “and call me Connin, please. That Lord Commander shit gets old.” His eyes widened for a moment as he realized he’d just cursed in front of a queen. “Beg your pardon, Your Grace. I’ve been around these louts for so long that the foulest words just slip out.”

“It’s quite fine,” Sansa replied with a wry laugh. “I hear more than my fair share of those words from him.” She hooked her thumb in Sandor’s direction, not even caring that he rolled his eyes at her. “Anyway, we were hoping to travel north of the Wall to find my brother.”

“Just the two of you?” Connin asked in shock as he looked between her and Sandor.

“Yes,” Sansa answered.

“It’s mighty dangerous out there, especially for the Queen in the North and just one man.”

“I could kill every man in this keep if I wanted,” Sandor growled.

Connin gave him a once over before nodding. “Fair enough, I suppose.” He called over a couple of men and said, “Let them out there, I guess. Give them some tips for ranging, alright?”

The men nodded before leading them away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another kind of short chapter, but this one was more of a transition. I just really wanted to get them to Castle Black and Beyond the Wall because the slow burn is dying, guys. In one of the next two chapters, there will be some not-so-slow-burn stuff, I swear it. Girl Scout's honor! (You shouldn't take that too seriously, though, because I was a terrible Girl Scout back in the day.)
> 
> Anywho, thanks for reading and for commenting. I love reading all your guys' thoughts. I hope you all are staying safe and healthy. Get geared up for some SanSan action in the next couple of chapters.


	17. Chapter Seventeen

As a child of the North, Sansa had thought she knew what cold was.

She was wrong.

The cold of the land that lay beyond the Wall was bitter in a way she had never felt before, except once. It reminded her of the chill that swept across the North when the Night King descended upon their farms and keeps with his army of the dead. She knew this type of cold to be unforgiving and endless, especially when the sun went down.

This was one of the reasons Sansa rode behind Sandor with her body pressed so tightly against his that she could hardly figure out where she ended and he began. The warmth that came off of him in waves felt better than good against her chest as the icy winds roared across the frozen wasteland they rode through with the hoods of their cloaks hiding their faces from the raging snowstorm she could almost smell as it built in the air.

“We’ll need to find shelter soon,” Sansa yelled in her shield’s ear, hoping he could hear her over the raging storm. “Lest we wish to lose some limbs!”

She thought she heard Sandor’s commonplace, “Aye,” in agreement, but it could have simply been the wind and nothing more.

They lasted in the storm another half an hour before a little cabin came into view. There were a couple of cracks in the exterior walls, but she was sure the wood, no matter how cracked, would provide more shelter than the thin cloth of their tents. It even had a fireplace, though she knew Sandor would not appreciate a roaring fire in such a small space, not even if it were contained.

Sandor tied Stranger off outside underneath a copse of trees that provided as much protection as could be found in the North’s natural elements before helping Sansa unload their supplies from the horse. He continuously pushed her away from the beast whenever she got too close to his muzzle, fearful that the moody creature would take a snap at her, but Stranger seemed to enjoy her touch as she stroked along his silken neck.

“I hate to leave the poor thing out there,” Sansa murmured as soon as they entered the cabin, finding that the wind’s roar was not quite so loud within its walls.

“ _Poor_ _thing_?” Sandor turned an amused gaze on her. “That _poor thing_ ate the fingers of a stableboy when the lad tried to feed him a fucking carrot.” He shook his head in amusement as he chuckled to himself and grumbled, “ _Poor_ _thing_ ,” once more.

“He’s a sweet creature to me,” Sansa argued, uncaring of the horse’s past. She shivered slightly as a particularly cold blast of air slammed against the cabin. Though the cabin was much warmer than outside, it was still far past freezing. “I hate to think of him suffering in that cold.”

“He’s endured much worse,” Sandor grumbled, reminding her that the horse was, in fact, a warhorse, “but I’ll go light a fire out there for the  _ poor thing  _ so his joints don’t freeze up. He’s too old for that shit.”

“I knew you cared about him,” Sansa teased as a wide grin spread across her face. She felt a bit of concern for him about his fear of fire, but she knew he didn't care too much to use it for necessities so long as his body was far enough away from it.

“Careful with your words, Little Bird,” Sandor said as he passed her by, “or I’ll have to leave you out there with him.”

“Stranger wouldn’t mind the company.”

Sandor barked out a laugh as he trudged back out into the snow, probably to find some firewood for the fire he would build for Stranger, leaving her standing in the middle of an empty cabin.

With a lack of ideas on what to do, Sansa rifled through one of the bags the rangers of the Night’s Watch had given and locked her hands around a bag of what looked to be dried meat. She pulled out a stick-shaped piece and bit into it with gusto, though the saltiness of the treat surprised her as it scraped across her tongue. The stick was tough to chew through, but she managed to get through it and two more pieces without breaking any teeth before Sandor stormed back into the cabin with a thunderous look on his face.

“Did you start a fire for Stranger?” Sansa asked carefully as she tried to figure out who or what his anger could be directed at.

“Aye.”

Sansa nodded, wondering if he would eventually tell her about his rage or if he would prefer to pace around the room in quiet anger. To ease some of the silence around them, she tipped her head towards the bag of dried meat in her hands and said, “The Night’s Watch gave us some rations for our trip. They're a little tough, but the taste isn’t too bad.”

He snatched the bag from her hands and shoved it back into the satchel it had first been stowed in. “Not hungry,” he grumbled.

Sansa narrowed her eyes and crossed her arms over her chest. “Okay, what happened out there?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“Nothing,” he repeated in a striking growl that would have scared a lesser person.

“Fine,” Sansa said with a shrug as she pulled out a bedroll from one of their bags and rolled it out on the cabin floor near one of the spots where there weren’t any cracks in the walls. “I’m going to try and sleep, if that’s even possible with this wind.”

Before she could even lay herself onto the bedroll, Sandor’s pacing stopped as a great sigh escaped from his lips. He ran a hand through his hair nervously before saying, “I think we’re being tracked.”

“Beyond the Wall?” Sansa asked in shock.

“Aye.”

Although she knew it was more likely Wildings in search of easy prey to fall upon, she couldn’t help but wonder if these silent trackers had followed them from Winterfell. Maybe those men or women wanted her dead and decided nobody would care to look for her Beyond the Wall. “We’ll just have to be vigilant,” Sansa said after a moment of thought.

There was a long, stunted silence that had her holding her breath. She didn’t know what she was expecting, perhaps she was waiting on him to call her stupid as so many others had once done, but the words that left her lips only succeeded in leaving her breathless. “It worries me,” he grumbled as he unrolled his bedroll across the room. “If the cunts'll come this far north for you, I wonder what they’d do if they had you. 

Sansa caught his eye across the room as she burrowed further into her fur-lined cloak to try and hide from the chill leaking through the cabin’s thin walls. “There’s no sense in worrying about it this evening,” she found herself saying. “It will only cause us to lose rest we cannot go without.”

He grunted as he sat against the opposite wall and sharpened his sword. His gray eyes were glued to the door as he swept the sharpening stone across his gleaming blade. “You should rest,” he said as his eyes finally came to meet hers. He gave her a hesitant smile that belayed his concern and worry for her. “It’s been a long day.”

“I’ll only rest when you do,” Sansa responded as she laid her head against her forearm and continued to watch him. “I’m sure you're more exhausted than me.”

Sandor tipped his head in an acknowledging nod as he set aside his sword, though he kept it within arm’s reach, and fell back against his bedroll. His own cloak was lined with the thick, black fur of a bear and covered most of his body, although she noticed that his feet did peek out the bottom from time-to-time as he tossed and turned. She wondered if sleep came to him as unexpectedly as it usually came to him.

Before nightmares could drag her into a warring sleep, a breeze colder than any she’d felt before blasted through the cabin, bringing shivers dancing up her spine. She pulled her cloak tightly around her shoulders, but the icy chill did not dissipate. It simply crept underneath the garment to slide along her skin, prickling gooseflesh upon the silken skin of her arms and legs. Her teeth chattered from the chill as she tried to ignore it to no avail.

Without thinking of the consequences, Sansa stood from her bedroll on frozen feet. She grabbed the head of the little mat and tugged it across the room as she stormed over to where Sandor lay, his head buried in his arms while the muscles of his back were on full display beneath the tightly-stretched tunic he wore. She dropped the bedroll down next to his, curling up on it and soaking in the heat that seemed to emanate from his whole being, and she couldn’t even stop herself from wrapping a slender arm around his waist. She snuggled her body against his warm side, feeling the hard plains of muscles against her soft curves.

He groaned as he rolled onto his side, still asleep if his closed eyes were any indication. He wrapped both of his arms around her small frame and tugged her as close as possible. With her nose pressed into his chest, Sansa sighed contentedly as he mumbled, “Little Bird.”

As soon as the words left his lips, though, Sandor froze almost entirely against her, even his breathing stopped in a halt so sudden that she’d almost thought he’d died on the spot. She peeked up at him through her lashes to find him staring down at her with wide eyes full of shock as if he couldn’t for the life of him figure out what she was doing so close to him.

Reluctantly, Sansa opened her mouth to explain that it was too cold on her side of the room, that his warmth was keeping her from shivering the night away, but her words died in her throat before they could be fully formed as his mouth descended upon hers.

Sansa had been kissed before, that much was true. Joffrey had planted little kisses along her lips, though they had been chaste and used as motivation for her loyalty. Baelish had kissed her, just the once, swiftly and with enough pressure that it was a separate sensation from that of Joffrey’s kisses, though she still remembered it with vile in her throat. Then Ramsay . . . Well, Ramsay’s kisses had always come with their fair share of torment.

But this kiss . . .  _ Gods _ , she thought as he kissed her as she’d never been kissed before,  _ is this what it’s supposed to feel like?  _ His lips moved against hers with a kind of passion she’d never quite tasted before. She felt his tongue trace against the seam of her lips, asking for entrance, and she obliged immediately, opening her mouth for him.

Sansa barely even noticed when her body was lifted from her bedroll and pulled on top of his chest as she returned the kiss with a ferocity of her own. She wrapped her arms around his neck and carded her fingers through his hair, wondering how the dark locks of such a rough man could be so soft against her skin. 

When he turned his attention to her neck, nibbling and sucking along the ivory skin there, Sansa blushed hotly at the moan that began in her throat. It left her lips almost in a wanton way that would have Septa Mordane turning over in her grave. As the noise shivered in the air, Sandor halted his actions, frozen as he had been before.

After more time than she would have liked, his gaze rose to meet hers and he blinked, just once, before tossing her back onto her bedroll. As confusion swirled around inside her, she watched him pace the small cabin with his hand threading through his soft locks roughly, almost as if he wished he could tear his hair out by the roots.

“What’s wrong?” Sansa asked in a wobbling voice, wondering if it was something she’d done.

“That wasn’t a dream,” he whispered seemingly to himself, though it was loud enough for her to just barely make it out. He shook his head as he spared a glance in her direction for a single moment. “Tell me that was just a dream, Sansa.”

Sansa’s brows furrowed as she said, “It wasn’t a dream, Sandor.”

“Seven bloody hells,” he spat as he slammed his fist into a nearby wall, causing a resounding crack to echo through the cabins. She wasn’t at all surprised to see streams blood dripping from his knuckles, but it shocked her just the same. “I shouldn’t have done that,  _ any _ of that.”

From the way he said it, Sansa knew he wasn’t talking about punching the wall. Her confusion melted into a hurt that stung at her heart as if it had been pierced by a sword. “Why not?”

“Why not?” he repeated in a snarl. He rounded on her and stuck a bloodied finger in her face, trying to scare her in a way that wouldn’t work. “Kissing a bloody queen is not something second-sons of lowborn houses do if they want to keep their damned heads.”

“Nobody will touch your head so long as I’m around,” Sansa said patiently, uncaring as he resumed his mad pacing. “I won’t let them.”

“When I take you to bed, too, will you stop your fucking lords for calling for my ugly mug then?” he yelled as he slammed his fist into the wall again.

Sansa watched him with unimpressed eyes and a rigid spine as she replied with a simple, “Yes.”

Sandor shook his head at her as he punched the wall again and again and again until Sansa began to worry about the damage he could do to his hand if he kept it up. Before she could stop herself, she was across the room and grabbing his wrist in her small hands in a few quick strides. “Stop that, Sandor,” she pleaded as she wrapped the hem of her cloak around his bloodied hand. “I don’t like to see you hurt.”

Once more, he shook his head and grumbled, “This can only go one way, Little Bird,” in a low, soft tone that stroked something deep inside of her to life.

With a sudden spout of bravery she hadn’t even been aware she held, Sansa rose up on her tiptoes until she was so close that she could feel his warm breath on her frosty cheeks. She hooked her arms around his neck to steady herself as she whispered, “I don’t care,” against his mouth and brought her lips down on his.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promised you guys something good, didn't I? EEE! So, just to clarify, Sandor did think the first kissy kiss was a dream. He totally thought he was asleep until he heard her moan, which was probably a noise he never imagined out of her so he snapped out of it and was like, "Oh damn, not a dream, not a dream."
> 
> Anywho, who wants to see smut in the next chapter? I'm gonna feel awkward as hell writing it, but I'll do storm through it for you guys! Let me know what you think! Thanks for reading!


	18. Chapter Eighteen

As Sandor’s lips moved against hers, Sansa realized that the kiss she had always found herself aching for, the one she remembered from the night of the Blackwater, had never happened. It had been nothing more than the fanciful imaginings of a sad girl. This discovery came to her as she realized his lips were just as soft as her own, albeit a little chapped from the cold, while her mind had conjured up the idea that they would be rough because of his scars.

_ Gods, I never want this to end,  _ she thought as her fingers twisted themselves into inky locks of hair and tugged his face even closer to her own. For all she knew, this could be one of the Seven Heavens that the Septons were always so preachy about, but a nip to her bottom lip pulled her out of that train of thought for nothing so sinful could possibly exist in a place so pure.

Despite the intimacy of the moment, Sandor’s hands never left her waist, where they almost completely encircled her. They could have wandered across her back and dipped low enough to caress her bottom through the thick weave of her travel dress, but they didn’t. He could have brought them up to grasp at her breasts, yet he didn’t. Instead, he simply kept his hands around her waist, gently squeezing her sides every once in a while in what she could almost describe as reverence.

And gods, it made her brave.

Her hands rose to his chest of their own accord before gently pushing against it, commanding him to stop without words, and he froze. Even his breathing came to a halt as she pulled her lips away from his. She saw hurt and confusion mingling in his gray gaze, but she needed to show him this part of her before she chickened out.

Sansa needed him to  _ see _ .

“There’s something I wish to show you,” she whispered as she reached up to cradle his scarred cheek in her palm. “I just—,” she stumbled as she remembered Penna’s face the first time she’d seen, how wide and pitying her eyes had become. This was Sandor, though. He would be different, she was sure of it. “I need you to promise that you won’t look at me any differently.”

“I promise,” he grumbled softly as he watched her from underneath creased brows.

Sansa reached behind herself and began to unlace the ties of her dress. She watched as his eyes grew wide with shock, but she shushed him with a shake of her head before he could protest. The dress sagged against her body as the last tie came undone. She crossed her arms over her chest for a moment as she took deep, steadying breaths to try and fight away the nerves building up inside her mind. She let the dress fall to the ground.

For anyone else, the moment could have been something sexual, but the uncovering of her body was not meant to hint at sensuality. It was meant to show him her past, what she’d suffered, and all that she had survived. She stood before him in nothing but her smallclothes, and she knew the very moment he saw what she was trying to reveal to him from the way his eyes widened as his lips parted into a large ‘O’ shape.

The first jagged scar his eyes landed on was the one he’d caught a glimpse of the day they visited the winter town for the smallfolk festival. It was as long as her forefinger and healed into a pale pink. Something flickered in his gaze as his eyes wandered to the one that lay in the plain between her breasts, spreading vertically between each side of her chest. It could have challenged her forearm in length and her hair in redness.

Hours could have passed as she stood before him, feeling as if she were about to freeze solid and burst into flames all at once, as he studied each and every scar Ramsay had littered across her pale skin. His eyes drew a connection of lines between every scar as they traced across her chest and abdomen and arms and legs and back, noting every single imperfection.

“The bastard did that to you,” he said in a gruff voice after what felt like an eternity.

It wasn’t a question.

“He said my skin would make a pretty canvas for his art until he could finally peel it away from my body,” she explained stoically as she finally bent to pull her dress back over her body. Her fingers shook as she laced the ties, but she managed to fasten the garment around her body once more. “His father told him to do anything he wished to me so long as I remained alive and no damage came to my face.” 

Sansa shivered at the memory of Roose Bolton coming undone with anger the one time Ramsay had touched her face. The bastard had slapped her so hard that her lip had split, bloodying her chin.  _ We need the face of Sansa Stark _ , Roose had yelled as he struck his son with his fist, bringing about a chorus of pained grunts from Ramsay’s lips. It had been the one time she had actually liked the elder man. That had disappeared as soon as Ramsay decided he would just have to get more creative with his torments.

“Seven bloody Hells,” Sandor swore as he pulled her against him in a crushing embrace. She almost thought she felt something wet in her hair when he pressed his face against the crown of her head, but she didn’t comment on it. “If I had known what was happening to you, I would have come for you then.”

He pulled away from her just enough to reveal tears shining in his eyes as he looked down at her with something close to guilt swimming in his gaze, though she couldn’t imagine why he would feel guilty for Ramsay’s cruelty. “I would have killed him for you, Little Bird,” he whispered as he stroked her cheek with the calloused pad of his thumb. “I should have killed them all for what they did to you.”

“Them?” she asked, confused as to who he was talking about it.

“Joffrey, Cersei, fucking Trant,” he spat as he shook his head. The guilt was still present on his face, but it was clouded by a raging storm that would soon turn into his signature anger. “Littlefucker and the Bolton bastard and anyone that let him touch you.”

“There was nothing you could have done,” Sansa said as she grabbed his hand and led him over to their bedrolls. She forced him to lay down beside her and managed to snuggle her head onto his shoulder as he wrapped an arm around her. “I could never blame you for any of it.”

She knew that was what was bothering him. He had stood by as Joffrey had ordered her to be beaten like a dog by Trant. He had watched as Cersei insulted her with sharp, witty words that could have easily been mistaken as motherly affection. Yet, she had never blamed him for doing his duty, for not intervening, because he had been the only one to never touch her. He’d wiped away her blood and hidden her bare body from the court with his own cloak.

“You should,” he snarled, even as he pulled her closer to his body.

“But I don’t," she insisted.

After several long moments of silence, Sandor sighed as if he decided it wasn’t worth arguing about and pressed a kiss to her forehead. It was quick and sweet and everything she ever wanted because it still filled her stomach with those little flutters. It would be so easy to fall asleep like that, wrapped up in his arms, but there was more she wanted to say.

She looked up at him, finding his eyes, and said, “You’re the second person to see them.”

“The scars?” he asked, though she was sure he already knew what she meant.

“My handmaiden, Penna, was the first,” Sansa told him as she rolled onto her side so that her chest was pressed against his. “She came to my chambers to bathe me and saw them when I disrobed. It was horrible to explain where I got them.” She shook her head at the memory of her weeping against Penna’s ample bosom, barely able to explain her traumas in full sentences. “I decided then that I would never show them to another person.”

“You showed me,” he reminded her gently.

“I wanted to be honest with you,” Sansa explained as she rose up on one elbow. Her face hovered upon his as she planted a sweet kiss against his lips. “If we were to,” she paused to choose her words carefully, hoping he wouldn’t think that she was pressuring him for such things, “go any further with each other, I wouldn’t want you to discover them then and decide you don’t like what you see.”

His brow furrowed as he looked up at her in complete and utter confusion. “You thought I’d do something like that?” he asked with a wry chuckle. He pointed at the scarred side of his face and shook his head. “Are you blind, girl? A couple of scars aren’t enough to scare me away.”

“I had heard that scars make a woman less,” Sansa bit her lip as she searched for the appropriate word, “ _ appealing  _ to a man.” Her eyes fell away from his as she found herself unable to hold his bewildered gaze. “It was always made clear to me that men were meant to bear scars while women were meant to be unmarred by such things.”

“Bugger that, Little Bird,” Sandor mumbled as he wrapped both of his arms around her body and rolled them until her back was against the bedroll and he was the one hovering above. His face was so close to hers that she could just barely make out the silver specks in his eyes, despite the darkness of the cabin. “You want to know the first thing I thought when that dress hit the ground?”

Sansa nodded breathlessly as she tried not to notice all the places where their bodies touched.

An odd sparkle lit up in his eyes as he brought his lips down to kiss her cheeks, her forehead, the tip of her nose, the lids of her eyes, and then, finally, her lips before saying, “I thought _Seven help me, but she’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen_ and that was still the only thing running through my mind after I noticed the scars.”

Tears blurred her vision at his words. It was everything she ever wanted to hear from him, and she knew it was nothing like what some pretty lord husband would say upon their wedding night. His words had made her decision for her and nothing would stop her from getting her way: Sandor Clegane would be her husband, or no one would.

Sansa started to pull him down for another kiss, but a shrill whinny from Stranger echoed through the air, alerting them to an unknown danger. Almost immediately, Sandor rolled away from her and reached out for his sword. He held it tightly within his grip as he crept towards one of the cabin’s broken windows to peer out into the darkness of the storm with an acute eye.

“Do you see anything?” Sansa asked quietly as she rose to her feet and pulled her daggers from the pockets of her cloak.

“No, the snow is coming down too heavily,” he answered in as close to a whisper as his gruff voice allowed. “I can’t see a fucking thing.”

The heady feeling of fear crept into Sansa’s body as if it had never once left it, taking root deep in the pit of her stomach. She closed her eyes as she tried to will it away, but it only managed to bury itself deeper, squirming restlessly in her terror. Still, she had lived with fear as her truest companion since she was little more than a girl in love with a foul prince, and it hadn’t gotten the better of her yet.

“What should we do?” Sansa questioned as she forced herself to hold her chin up and her back straight, in spite of the terror she knew was digging itself a nest in her body. “Maybe we can bar the door and wait them out.”

“If they truly want it, Little Bird, they’ll find a way.”

Just then, the door slammed open.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is kind of short, but it's jammed pack with good fluff. Sorry about the no smutty smut, but I decided it was too soon for that. We're getting there, I promise! Now, who could be at the door, hmm? Tell me what you guys think! I love hearing from you. My fanfics are the only things keeping me safe during all the Corona-craziness!


	19. Chapter Nineteen

Sansa’s terror turned to surprise when she noticed the mop of dark curls covering the intruder’s head. The man was pale, not quite her height, and wearing all black. When he raised his head to look around, she saw a face she hadn’t been expecting to find so soon, the face of her brother. She stifled a gasp as she took a step towards him. “Jon?”

Jon’s eyes widened at his sister’s voice. His head swiveled in her direction in shock. “Sansa? What are you doing here?” Quickly, he continued his survey of the room and, if it were possible, looked even more startled when he spied the large, towering build of Sandor in the corner. Recognition flared to life in his face, though it was coupled with surprise. “Clegane?”

“How did you find us, Jon?” Sansa asked in amazement. She rushed forward and pulled her brother into a crushing hug. “The last thing the Night’s Watch heard about you was that you were supposed to be in Hardhome, helping the Free Folk rebuild their village there.”

“I was,” Jon replied when they broke apart. “Tormund and I were sent out on a hunting trip. While we were tracking an elk, we saw a raven in the trees, eyes all white—,”

“Bran,” Sansa breathed in astonishment. She was still confused as to how her young brother’s powers worked, but she knew white-eyed ravens were most likely her brother’s eyes. “Bran must have seen the men following us.”

“Aye,” Jon rumbled. “We followed the raven here.” He tipped his head towards the still-open door behind him. “There were about five men close to attacking the cabin before Tormund and I ambushed them.”

“Did you kill them all?” Sansa asked as she worried her bottom lip with her teeth. As much as she wanted them all dead, she knew any information they could offer would be a thousand times more useful than corpses.

“We left one alive,” Jon said, easing her anxiety just a little bit. “Tormund’s out there having some fun with him as we speak.”

“Mad fucker, that ginger is,” Sandor grumbled, though she noticed the corners of his mouth twitching as they always did when he was trying to fight off a smile.

Jon spared Sandor a passing, curious glance before turning a critical eye on Sansa, looking her up and down for injuries, she assumed. When he was finished, he crossed his arms over his chest and said, “Now, would you kindly explain what  _ you _ are doing north of the Wall, Little Sister?”

“I was looking for you, actually,” Sansa answered with ease as she leaned back against a rickety table, the only piece of furniture left in the old cabin. “I’ve been having some . . .  _ trouble  _ back home. Bran suggested you would be helpful.”

Jon’s eyes darted between her and Sandor as he asked, “What kind of trouble, San?” His gaze slipped down to her stomach, studying it from every angle he could crook his head.

Sansa slapped his shoulder as she realized what he was looking for. “I’m not with child, you bloody fool!” she snapped. “Men are trying to assassinate me, that’s the trouble.”

“Oh,” Jon mumbled as his cheeks turned a bright, flaming red in embarrassment, one of the few traits the two of them shared. “I didn’t mean to presume that you would—I don’t think of you as a loose wo—,” he huffed as if his words weren’t working at the moment, which they definitely weren’t. “Who’s trying to assassinate you?”

“I don’t know,” Sansa admitted. “One assassin escaped during questioning. Arya killed the other. So far, we haven’t found any information—,”

“Wait, Arya’s home?” Jon asked, his face lighting up.

Sansa felt a surge of jealousy rise up at his excitement to see Arya, but she knew there was no reason to be so. While it was true, Jon and Sansa weren’t nearly as close as Jon and Arya, they still loved each other. Besides, Sansa had always been closer to Robb than Arya was growing up, so fair’s fair. It didn’t matter that the brother who would’ve looked excited to see her was dead. It mattered that he’d once lived.

“Yes, she’s been home for a while now,” Sansa replied.

“Alright, assassins, Arya.” Jon’s eyes narrowed as he tilted his head in Sandor’s direction. “What about him, though? Why is Sandor Clegane here?”

“He’s my sworn shield.”

Jon’s eyes nearly bulged out of his head. “Since when?”

“Since right after the second assassination attempt.” A bit of a blush formed on her cheeks as she thought about their little ceremony, how they’d held hands and knelt before each other, but she pushed that memory away to keep Jon from noticing her flustered face. “He arrived at Winterfell a few weeks before that, though.”

Jon narrowed his eyes for a single moment as he once again took in their disheveled appearance, the loose way Sansa’s dress hung from her form, and how close the bedrolls were placed together. She waited for the accusation, but it never came. If Jon realized what they’d been doing moments before he burst into the cabin, he didn’t say anything about it. “Alright,” Jon said after a long, tense moment, “perhaps your sworn shield would like to question the would-be assassin himself.”

“Actually, I would like to have a little talk with him, if possible,” Sansa stated as she started to pull her discarded boots back onto her sock-clad feet and tightened her cloak around her body with clenched hands. “I want to look in his eyes when he explains why he wants me dead.”

Sandor surged forward with alarm written clear across his face. “Are you sure, Li—Your Majesty? He could have something up his sleeve.”

“Like a dagger,” Jon suggested darkly.

“I suppose it’s a good thing I’ll have three strong men right beside me while I speak with him, isn’t it?” Sansa said chipperly as she clasped her hands in front of her stomach and nodded towards Jon. “Tell Tormund to bring the man inside.”

Jon disappeared back into the snowstorm with his shoulders hunched to brace against the cold, leaving Sansa alone with Sandor once again. She turned to find him watching the door with wary eyes as if he expected more enemies to come through the door at any moment. Sighing, she crossed over to him and pulled his hand into her grasp. “Everything’s going to be fine,” she promised in a small voice. “We’ll get the information we need out of this man.”

“That’s what you hope, Little Bird,” Sandor replied gruffly, though he still squeezed her hand comfortingly. “Might be this one doesn’t know anything.”

“If he doesn’t, then he doesn’t,” Sansa said as she brought his hand up to her lips to kiss the back of it. “Whether assassins keep coming for me or not, I know I can count on you to keep me safe.”

Sansa heard him huff something that might have been a chuckle, but the door opened before either of them could say anything more. She dropped his hand and backed away from him a few steps, not wanting to alert her brother to the closeness of their relationship anymore than she already might have. It was only after Tormund burst through the door and pulled her into the tightest, most bone-crushing hug that she regretted that decision.

“Fire Queen!” Tormund shrieked in his ardently mad way as he spun her around in a circle and dropped her back onto her feet. He pinched her pale cheeks in his dirty fingers as his lips twisted into a beaming smile. “It’s been too long since I’ve seen your magnificent face!”

“Yes, much too long, Tormund,” Sansa said in the casual tone she reserved for friends and family. Even though the man didn’t remind her of any of her brothers, she still felt a kinship towards and considered him as much a brother as Jon or Bran. It helped that Tormund was one of the only people in the world that both she and Jon truly trusted. “I’ll have to come visit you at Hardhome once it has been fully rebuilt.”

“The Free Folk would love that, Fire Queen,” Tormund replied with glee. “They all adore the queen that gave them a chance at citizenship in the North.” Once again, he pinched her cheeks as he chuckled boldly. “They might just have a feast in your honor. The men, for sure, will enjoy any visit you wish to bestow upon them.”

Sansa blushed, knowing exactly what the Free Folk men wished she would bestow upon them. Apparently, redheads were considered very impressive prizes Beyond the Wall. She’d once asked Tormund about all the stares she received from his people and he had told her it was because she was _kissed_ _by_ _fire_ and they considered it a lucky charm, like the rabbit’s feet some superstitious Northerners kept to ward away bad times.

“Here’s your guy,” Jon announced as he hauled the hogtied man into the center of the room and dropped him with a heavy thud.

Sansa strode to kneel before the man. There was nothing remarkable about him, no signature features that someone could pick out in a crowd. He looked like any other Northern man might with mousy brown hair and dirt brown eyes. A couple of freckles had been lightly dusted across his nose and cheeks, telling her that he probably spent enough time in the sun to be a farmhand or something of the sort. The dirt underneath his fingernails supported that theory.

“What’s your name?” Sansa asked after she finished studying him.

The man— _ boy _ was probably more correct as he looked no older than Bran—narrowed his eyes at her question. His face scrunched into something close to hate as he spat in her face. She wiped the saliva from her cheeks with the inside of her cloak with only an unimpressed twitch of her brow as her only reaction. “I’m not tellin’ you anything,” he growled, trying to look fierce.

“You will,” Sansa assured him in a soft, lethal voice. “I promise, you will.” With reflexes quicker than those of a rabbit, she pulled her dagger from her cloak pocket and pressed the tip to his throat. “Let’s try this again, boy. What is your name?”

“You won’t kill me,” the boy said, disbelieving, with a scoff and a roll of his eyes. He leaned forward just enough to hiss, “You need me for information.”

“You’re right, I do,” Sansa replied as she dragged her dagger away from his throat. “But,” she held the blade to one of his hands and trailed its tip along his thumb. A thin line of blade following as she traced a shallow cut through his snow-pale skin. “I don’t really need your fingers or your toes, do I?”

His eyes widened as she began to lower blade down on his thumb, slowly, until the steel was just barely touching the skin below the knuckle and—, “Don’t!” he called out before she could remove his thumb from the rest of him. “My name is Zachariah Fowler. I live on a farm in the Rills with my parents.”

“Not a very brave, lad, is he?” Sandor grumbled in amusement behind her.

“I’ll be needin’ my thumbs to plow a field, won’t I?” Zachariah snarled, though his words came out limp as he sucked in an unsteady breath. “Look, I’m just followin’ orders. There ain’t no need to be choppin’ off my thumbs and such.”

“Why act so brave before?” Sansa asked.

“I didn’t figure a lady would try to dismember me,” Zachariah murmured. His brown eyes flared with sincerity as he looked around the room for sympathy. He found none. “Lord Ryswell told me I wouldn’t be in any danger if I was took for questionin’ because you wouldn’t kill me if you needed information.”

“Lord Ryswell?” Sansa questioned as confusion overwhelmed her. “Did he send you to kill me?”

There was no hesitation in his answer as he said, “Yes.”

Surprise shot through her like a bolt of lightning. Lord Rodrik Ryswell had never been what she would call a friendly man. He was known for being a very solitary person, which was why she hadn’t missed his presence when he was absent from both her coronation and from any ceremonies afterward. She’d known he had sworn his house to Roose Bolton when he became the Warden of the North, but she had given him the benefit of the doubt since a lot of Northern houses had sworn themselves to Roose and hadn’t aided in defeating him. She couldn’t very well execute all the houses that stayed loyal to the false warden.

“Why?” Sansa asked, needing to know what she’d ever done to earn this man’s ire.

“Don’t know,” Zachariah answered with a shrug. “Could be a number o’ things, I suppose.”

“Would you be willing to speak of Lord Ryswell’s treachery before the lords and ladies of the land?” Sansa questioned as she stood and began thinking, plotting, wondering what could go wrong, what could go right, and all the things in-between.

“Will I be free to go back to my farm if I do?”

Sansa hesitated before answering. The boy had been about to help kill her, after all, but he was only following the orders of his lord. She remembered Theon, or Reek, following Ramsay around like a lost pup, trying to do whatever he could to appease his master. Although she had never heard rumors of Lord Ryswell being a cruel man, she could see how the boy, a simple farmhand by all accounts, could be scared into such a scheme by a man of such power.

“Yes.”

“Then I’ll do it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alrighty . . . so we finally know who's behind the assassination attempts! Or do we? Mwahaha! I don't recall Lord Ryswell being mentioned in the TV show, but he is vaguely mentioned in the books from time-to-time. I know he seems like a random character to just put in here for no reason, but trust that there is a reason and it's a good one, I swear. Anywho, I love Tormund so much! I feel like Sansa spent a lot of time around him when he was hanging around Jon, so they're like BFFs in this story.   
> I think we might get a surprise Sandor pov next chapter, if I can get his voice right. I've never actually attempted to write from his point of view before, so we'll see how it goes. If not, I still have a great chapter planned that will lead to another great chapter that will have y'all screaming.   
> By the way, I know torture seems a little out-of-character for Sansa, but she wasn't going to actually torture him. She was just trying to scare him a little bit.


	20. Chapter Twenty

Sandor grunted as he mounted Stranger, feeling the pain his leg from the injury Brienne of fucking Tarth gave him. Even now, the ache spread from across the limb, numbing it to anything but pain. It was worse in the cold, he’d noticed after his time spent in the North, but the pain wasn’t bad enough to make him leave this newfound home of his. He cast his gaze to the reason for his loyalty to the frozen wasteland.

Her red hair shone like a beacon in the white of winter, flowing down her back in an unruly braid of tangles. She hadn’t been able to find the brush she’d packed for their journey, so he’d watched as she combed her fingers through the silken locks and plaited her long tresses herself. He would have done it for her, but that fucking brother of hers was watching their every movement with his black eyes, always carefully cautious.

Those black eyes were the reason she rode with her brother-not-brother, not him. She’d pulled Sandor aside and looked up at him with those blue, blue eyes, kissing him lightly on the cheek as she told him they would have some time together soon. He knew better than to believe such foolishly good words, though. What they’d shared in that cabin had been born of the cold and weeks of travel on the roads, nothing more, even if it felt like everything to him.

“You are staring holes in the back of the Fire Queen,” Tormund stated from beside him, his voice uncharacteristically quiet for once. He looked over at the red-haired man to find him glaring daggers in his direction, though his wild hair made him look less dangerous and crazier. “If you are thinking of betraying her, I’ll kill you for it.”

Sandor wanted to curse at the man for being a stupid cunt, but he decided against doing that when he caught another glance of Sansa’s red hair out of the corner of his eye. If only for her, he wouldn’t start a fight with the man she viewed as another brother, especially since the man held the rope that tethered their prisoner to their group.

“I’d never betray her, you fucking ginger cunt,” Sandor grumbled without the spite he usually held in his voice for the man. In truth, the Wilding had grown on him since they first met. Even Sansa spoke fondly of the man. “Just thinking, I guess.”

Tormund’s red brows rose. “About the Fire Queen?”

“Aye,” Sandor replied.

“Because you love her?”

“Seven hells,” Sandor cursed at the man’s blunt question. “No, not because I love her.”

Tormund’s grin spread into one of mirth as mischief came to life in his eyes. “You admit that you  _ do _ love her.”

Sandor groaned inwardly at his own stupidity for falling right into that one. “No, I do not admit that.” He shook his head to clear his thoughts, but he found them more jumbled than ever. Whatever he felt for the Queen in the North could never be love, he knew that almost as clearly as he knew his own name. It would only bring more pain than his old, blackened heart could bear. “I admit that I care for her.”

“Aye, so does every man and woman in the North and beyond,” Tormund retorted. “The Free Folk love her as they have loved no other ruler of the North.”

“Why is that?” Sandor asked curiously, remembering Tormund’s words from earlier about the citizenship she granted the Free Folk. “What has she done to earn their love?”

“The Free Folk Settlement Proclamation,” Tormund said carefully, pronouncing each word as if it were as precious as a newborn babe. “She decreed it into law a few weeks after she took the throne. It granted the Dreadfort and all its lands to be held by Free Folk, should we wish it so.”

“Why are you all still up here in this fucking cold?” Sandor snapped, though his voice was soft as he thought about the proclamation Sansa had created. It had surely rankled a lot of Northern lords, but she had done it anyways. To thank the Free Folk? That was more than any ruler he’d ever followed had done for their own people, let alone people that didn’t belong to them. “Why aren’t you settled in the Dreadfort?”

“Some of us are,” Tormund told him. “Some of us prefer the hardships of the true North.”

“Why?” Sandor asked.

Tormund shrugged. “Less demands of us. Our women don’t like to be told to wear pretty dresses and wield needles, not knives. Our men like to eat with their hands and fuck bears—,”

“Ha!” Sandor guffawed. “I think you’re the only crazy shite stupid enough to fuck a bear.”

Tormund threw his head back and laughed heartily, drawing the stares of the Stark siblings, before saying, “You’d be right, my friend!” It took him a full five minute to stop his hysterical laughing before he sobered and looked straight into Sandor’s eyes. “Believe it or not, out of all the men and women that care for the Fire Queen, you are the only one that looks at her the way you do.”

Sandor bristled. “And how do I look at her?”

_ With lust, like a dog slobbering over a prime piece of meat. _

“In the way a blind man looks at the moon for the first time,” Tormund described gently with a small smile that made him look kind in the place of his crazy. “With awe and wonder and respect. It’s what she needs, too, after all she’s been through.”

Sandor shoved aside his words, even as they buried themselves inside his heart, trying to beat out the idea that he only cared for her and nothing more. “And what do you know about what she’s been through?” he questioned, trying to change the subject away from him.

“I was there when she finally made it to Castle Black after escaping the bastard,” Tormund said. For once, there was not even a hint of amusement or joy in this man’s eyes. The sorrow made him look like a man haunted. “I saw how broken she was, even if she tried to hide it.” He shook his head and spat into the snow-covered ground. “She looked as if she had seen all the monsters in the world.”

Sandor thought about that for a long while, knowing how true of an observation it was. His little queen had faced all the monsters in his head at least once. She had seen Gregor in his worst moments at the Tourney of the Hand. Years had passed while she was paraded around the court to be tortured by Joffrey and Cersei. Littlefinger used her for his schemes and Gods knew what else. Ramsey beat and raped her within an inch of her life. The Night King’s wights had risen in the Stark tombs with her sitting amongst the dead. She had battled Daenerys Targaryen in her own way with her words and policies.

And she had survived every single one of them.

“She has,” was all Sandor could say before spurring Stranger into a gallop so he could ride ahead, out of the way of the rest of the part. 

He was done talking.

He didn’t talk when they made it to the Wall and ate amongst the men of the Night’s Watch. He didn’t talk as they rode through the North for weeks on end, setting up camp only when necessary. He didn’t talk when he brought back kills from his hunts for them to roast up and eat. He definitely didn’t talk when Sansa tried to catch his eyes or when she tried to pull him away into the woods for some unknown reason.

Sandor was distancing himself from them all, and he knew why. The red-headed cunt’s words were true enough, even if he didn’t want to admit it to himself. He had fallen in love with his queen, despite every warning his head could have threatened his damned heart with. She was the one thing he wanted, but he could never have the Queen in the North as his own.

She would have to marry soon. Her lords and ladies would demand it of her so their precious kingdom could have heirs. There would be no room for an old dog like him in her life, not when her lord husband would be there to protect her, if he could. And Sandor? He would not be able to stand outside her chambers and listen to the pretty lordling fuck her.

No, Sandor knew there was no place for him once she married. It would be better to isolate himself, let his feelings grow cold and die, and then disappear into the dark of the night. When they finally reach Winterfell, he’ll drink himself into a stupor and leave her behind, just the same as he did that night when the world was aflame with green fire.

His plan started to feel empty and cold once they breached Winterfell’s walls. He watched as she jumped down from her brother’s horse and greeted everyone within the courtyard with a smile, even going so far as to pat the heads of grubby children. That blackened heart of his picked up whenever he saw a hint of her smile, the way her eyes were lit like candles, full of warm light.

She would be off to meet with her lords and ladies, to discuss the treachery at hand, and he didn’t feel like standing outside a door and waiting while they talked circles around each other. Instead of following her, he stalked off to the stables to care for Stranger; he never allowed stableboys to take care of the old stallion.  _ Gods, can I really leave her?  _ he asked himself as he absentmindedly brushed Stranger’s black mane, replaying her smile in his mind.

His question was answered by one of the lords standing in the shadows of the old building. He leaned towards his companion and said, “Haven’t you heard, old friend? Queen Sansa will soon be picking a man to take as her husband. I heard so from a friend on the Council.”

So the future he feared was coming to life sooner than even he imagined it would. A blur of emotions exploded in his chest, but the one that burned the most was the rage. Rage at him for being so stupid as to fall in love with a woman he could never have. Rage at the lords for forcing her to choose a husband. Rage at  _ her _ for kissing  _ him,  _ for giving him  _ hope _ , when she knew the choice awaiting her upon their return.

And Gods, he needed to be drunk.

Sandor stormed into the kitchens with a look fearsome enough to scare a vengeful god or two and barked out an order for a whole cask of wine. He wasn’t sure if he could drink the whole barrel without dying, but he would be damned if he didn’t try it. At the very least, if he did die, he wouldn’t have to deal with the heartache that was sure to come once he was sober enough to remember everything that caused him to drink so much.

He had been close to sober since he recovered from the fight with the lady knight, but he couldn’t bring himself to care about all that progress now. He downed cup after cup after cup, hoping to drown his sorrows as best he could. At one point, Tormund tried to pull the wine out of his grasp, but Sandor had snarled something mean he couldn’t quite remember and continued drinking like there was nothing else.

Because there was nothing else.

She was everything.

“Lord Clegane,” a timid serving boy said as Sandor downed another goblet. “Lord—Lord Clegane?”

“Aye, boy, spit it out,” Sandor spat.

“Queen Sansa wishes for you to meet her in the Godswood,” the boy stuttered before dashing away in a pile of fear.

Sandor contemplated leaving her to wait in the cold, but the wine muddled his mind and told him to see her, to hold her, to yell at her. It told him a lot of things, but it was mostly saying to go to her. He knocked his next goblet to the side, watching with irritated eyes as the wine spilled across the table, before stomping out of the hall, leaving his mess to be cleaned up by someone else.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This seems like it's going in a bad direction, but I promise that chapter 21 is going to make everything feel better. I will warn you, though, it's gonna have lots of angst!


	21. Chapter Twenty-One

Sansa’s hands trembled as she clasped them together in front of her. She could say it was the cold seeping through her gloves, but it certainly wouldn’t be a convincing lie. The weather was getting warmer and warmer each day. It wasn’t nearly close to the warmth of the South, but it was impossible to say that spring wasn’t sprouting over the land.

So, no, Sansa wasn’t  _ cold _ .

Sansa was nervous.

She let a long, slow exhale of breath fly out of her when a soft, floral breeze swept through the Godswood, rustling the leaves in the trees as it shivered past. Her eyes wandered over the grove as she tried to gather courage for what was about to happen, but she knew that even the Old Gods themselves couldn’t bring her the confidence she needed now.

She had to steel herself with thoughts of all she’d been through. There were so many times she had thought that it couldn’t get worse only to realize that it could. Yet, she had survived every single step of the way. She had found a way to live, even when she had felt like giving up. This, what she was about to do, was nothing compared to what she had lived through at the hands of Joffrey and Ramsay and Petyr.

A shot of anxiety bolted up her spine as she heard his heavy, lumbering footsteps. She knew who they belonged to almost immediately, recognizing them from how often they accompanied her around Winterfell as she made her rounds as Queen. She found herself righting the posture of her back until she stood as straight as an arrow, waiting for him to break through the treeline.

It had been so long since they talked. For some reason, he had avoided her since the cabin Beyond the Wall. She wanted to say she had no idea why, but she knew there was only one possible explanation. He regretted the kisses they’d shared, the feelings they’d expressed. She would not be surprised if he told her so himself. After all, he might not have been disgusted by her scars then, but he had had a lot of time to think about them during their travels.

When she saw his face, Sansa knew the conversation would not go well. He looked like a storm about to roll in, dark and thundering, especially with the way his mouth twisted into a frown when his eyes landed on her. For a moment, Sansa wondered what she could have possibly done to gain his ire, but she didn’t even try to guess as he came to a stop only a foot away from her.

“What is it you wanted to chirp about, Your Grace?” he grumbled as his eyes fell to her slipper-clad feet and stayed there, avoiding all contact with her face. “It’s late, and I would prefer to be drinking or sleeping.”

It  _ was _ late, she had to admit, but that was the reason she’d chosen to meet then and there. Nobody would be prowling around, hoping to sniff out their queen’s secrets. She’d thought they would have some time to talk without people constantly interrupting, as they did so often in the keep, but his words stuck to her like a leech she couldn’t pull away from her skin, stinging and sucking away at her life’s blood. Two words, in particular, forced a ball to form in her throat and stay there, clogging up her own attempt to speak.

_ Your Grace.  _ He hadn’t called her that for a while now. It had been  _ Sansa  _ or her favorite,  _ Little Bird. _ What had she done to become only the queen he served and nothing more once again? They’d been well on their way to a companionship, something warmer and more promising than a friendship, but it seemed she’d ruined it, just as she’d ruined so many things in her life.

_ Maybe I’ll ruin this, too,  _ Sansa thought bitterly to herself as she bit into her lower lip, worrying it with her teeth.

“Well, get on with it, then,” Sandor snapped after a moment.

“The Council wishes for me to find a husband,” Sansa stated almost immediately, the words tumbling out of her before she could take them back and wrap them in her usual grace and poise. “Well, the men of the Council do.” She shrugged her shoulders and twisted a loose lock of her hair around a gloved finger, uncaring of what her long-dead Septa would think of the action. “They claim it is so I’ll have an heir for the North.”

“Aye,” Sandor replied gruffly. “So I’ve heard.” Sansa’s eyes shot up to his in shock. How had he known that? She’d been trying to keep it a secret from people, especially him. “What is it you want me to do about it, hmm? Fight your pretty lords to figure out which ones aren’t cunts?”

“Well, no,” Sansa replied with just the slightest hint of confusion coloring her voice. She held his gaze and tried to make him understand what she wanted without her having to say it. “I didn’t have that in mind at all, Sandor.”

He leaned down until his face was so close to hers that, if she fell forward just a little bit, their lips would meet. The smell of alcohol—a fine Dornish red, she figured—came off of his breath in waves, warning her that he’d been deep in his cups when she’d summoned him. She let out a haggard sigh as she realized he probably wouldn’t remember a thing of this in the morning.

Out-of-nowhere, he reared his head back and barked a laugh, causing her to flinch at the sudden movements. “I suppose you’ll be dismissing me, then?” He shook his head, seemingly finding a strange, mocking joy in this. “Your pretty lord husband won’t want an ugly dog like me sniffing around his lady wife all the time.”

“No,” Sansa responded instantly as she crossed her arms over her chest and stared at him with narrowed eyes. “I am not dismissing you, either.”

“Then what,  _ Your Grace _ ?” He spat out her title as if it were fresh poison in his mouth. In this drunken rage, he looked every bit the Lannister creature he’d been in King’s Landing, but Sansa knew this man better than he probably knew himself. She didn’t flinch or shy away from his rage because she knew without a single doubt in her mind that he would never hurt her. “What is it that Queen Sansa of House Stark wants from a stupid old hound like me, hmm?”

“I want you to marry me,” she blurted, unable to stop the words from slipping past her lips.

Sansa held her breath as she watched him process her words, her eyes never straying from his stunned face. His brows creased together in the middle, forming ripples on the unscarred side of his forehead. Though his mouth was open, no words left his lips, even if she could see them forming in his questioning, confused eyes. The apple in his throat bobbed up and down as he swallowed harshly, over and over again.

“Did you hear me, Sandor?” Sansa asked, although she knew it was a stupid question. Of course, he heard her. She imagined there was nothing else in Westeros that could put the infamous Hound in such a state of shock as what she’d just proposed to him. “I want you to marry me.”

Finally, he shook his head and closed his eyes, almost as if he were clearing his mind of a thick fog. When his eyes shot open, their steely gray irises met her own Tully blue ones and she saw something she hadn’t expected to see: anger.

His chest rose and fell in an uneven, haggard way that made Sansa wonder if he were having an attack of the heart or some other such thing. She started to take a step forward, arms outstretched to hold him steady, but he stepped back with his eyes staying resolutely on the ground. “If this is—,” he sucked in a heaving breath and shook his head again. “If this is a jape or something else, I swear by whatever fucking cunt gods there are that I’ll—,”

“It’s not a jape,” Sansa cut him off as she realized where his mind had gone to drown him in such fury. He was the Hound, notorious for being a passionate killer with the supposedly ugliest mug in Westeros. He’d probably never had anyone willing to be with him, let alone marry him, especially not a queen. “It’s nothing but the truth, I swear it.”

“Why?” he gritted out the word as if it were the vilest thing to ever leave his lips. When he raised his head, the rage in his eyes was burning like fire hot enough to melt Valyrian Steel. He took a step forward, slouching over her menacingly as an animalistic growl left his lips. “Why me,  _ Your Grace _ ? I’m the Seven-forsaken Hound, for the Stranger’s sake, not some lord to be prettied up and made a king.”

“You wouldn’t be a king,” Sansa responded. She’d thought about this long and hard, and there would never be a King in the North while she ruled. Whatever husband she took would have to settle with being a queen’s consort, nothing more and nothing less. “You’d be my consort, not my king. I would never try to make you into something you’re not.”

He stared at her for a long while, his dark eyes boring into hers as if he were trying to tell her something but he just couldn’t get the words out. His mouth fell open and then slammed shut again before he simply turned and started back towards the keep, his steps clumsy and sluggish. The strong, proud muscles of his back slouched forward, weighed down by an unseen pressure.

Sansa chased after him, her legs moving of their own accord. “Wait, Sandor!” She grabbed his arm as he came within reach of her grasping hands and pulled him back around to face her. The fact that she could do that was a testament to how drunk he was. She forced him to look at her as she struggled to find the right words to explain her thoughts, to fix this situation, to do anything to make him stay. “Just let me explain—,”

“What, Little Bird?” he slurred as he looked down at her with glazed-over eyes. “What sweet, little chirpings are going to fall from your pretty beak this time?”

“I—I  _ know _ this is too much to ask of you, Sandor,” Sansa appeased, her words stuttering as they passed her lips, “but I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.” She closed her eyes as she felt a thick cloud of tears gathering. “I  _ can’t _ marry one of those lords, Sandor, not after everything.”

She couldn’t say what the  _ everything _ was, wouldn’t, but she knew he could make an accurate guess after seeing her scars. His attention was solely on her now, not on the idea of getting more wine in his system. Her hand clenched tighter around the thick fabric of his tunic sleeve, wrinkling it in her small, pale fist. When her eyes reopened, the tears she’d been trying to push back fell ever so gently.

“If you truly cannot stand the thought of marrying me, I would never force you to do such a thing,” Sansa assured him, her heart sinking with every word. After all the things she’d been through, she would never do that to another person. She could only hope he chose her. “I will release you from your vow, so that you may honorably leave my service and create a new life of your own choosing.”

“I don’t want to leave you,” he whispered hoarsely as his rough, calloused hands came up to wipe away the tears on her cheeks, “and you wouldn’t be forcing me to do anything.”

Sansa shook her head, knowing without a doubt that it was a lie. It had to be, even if she knew that Sandor would never lie to her. “I know how much of a burden it would be to marry me.” She laughed a dry, mirthless laugh and reminded him, “I’ve been used,  _ roughly _ , and it will always be an embarrassing topic for the man that weds me.”

“Any man who cares about that is a cunt,” Sandor argued gruffly as his hands strayed away from her tear-stained cheeks to slide through the red locks at the side of her head. “I can’t marry you, though. I’m the second son of a good-for-nothing house with the ugliest face in all of Westeros.” He tightened his grip on her hair, though not enough to hurt, and forced her to look him in the eyes as he said, “I’ve never been worthy of you, Sansa Stark, and I am definitely not worthy of the Queen in the North.”

Sansa reached up and cradled his cheeks, scarred and unscarred, in her petal-soft palms. “That’s exactly why you are worthy.”

“You don’t really want to be stuck with me, girl,” Sandor snapped as he pulled away without any warning, shocking her into stumbling back a step. “I’m a beast wrapped in a man’s skin. I would only ruin you.”

Sansa blinked in shock before huffing out a stupid, hysterical laugh. “You would ruin me?  _ You _ ? All of Westeros has ruined me, Sandor!” She felt more tears pouring down her cheeks as a strange, unfamiliar rage came alive and reared its ugly head inside her chest. “I was ruined the minute I left Winterfell. I’ve been stripped in front of an entire court, beaten, raped, tortured!” She shook her head at his stupidity and let out a scalding scoff. “You would hardly be the first to ruin me, dear shield.”

Sandor, at least, had the nerve to look cowed after her outburst. He ran a hand through his hair as he looked down at the ground, seemingly struggling with something. “I’m not a pretty lord, Sansa—,”

“Good! I don’t want a  _ pretty lord _ !” Sansa all-but screamed at the man, hoping that it would finally knock some sense into his rock-hard head. “Pretty lords are the reason half of my family is nothing but ash in the wind. I wouldn’t have asked you if I didn’t want you, Sandor.”

“If you didn’t want me,” he repeated, wonder filling his voice. “What do you mean by that?”

“How could I not want the only man in Westeros that I trust?” Sansa asked tiredly, suddenly feeling weak and weary about this whole ordeal. She sighed as she saw he was nowhere near close to answering her. “If you don’t want me, then can we please just get this over with?”

“What’s your plan to make the lords allow this?” Sandor questioned, sending another wave of shock crashing through her.

It seemed arguing, at least, had sobered him up, even just slightly.

“I’ll tell you if you agree to it,” Sansa shot back, hoping against hope he would take the hint.

“Yes,” he said.

“Yes, what?” Sansa needed to hear it, all of it.

“Yes, Sansa Stark,” Sandor took a step forward and raised his hand to run his knuckles gently across her cheekbone, “I’ll marry you.”

She sighed and felt the relief course over her, though she knew there was a definite possibility he wouldn’t remember a word of this when he woke on the morrow, not when she could still smell the reek of wine and ale on his breath. “I’ll hold you to that, Sandor Clegane,” was all she said before she made her way back to the keep, her drunken sworn shield stumbling along behind her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I've had this chapter written since the beginning, which is why it's out so soon after the last one. I knew from the first chapter that I wanted to get this point at the very least. I hope you guys enjoy it! Please stay safe and healthy!


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